Three quarters of a century ago, when Sag Harbor was an important
whaling port, and before railroads were even dreamed of on that remote
part of Long Island, there were dotted along the eastern shore only a
few quaint little villages, already old, with a small population
scattered in their vicinity, consisting almost entirely of a hardy
race, who, though professedly cultivators of the soil, in reality drew
most of their subsistence from arduous and often perilous toil upon
the sea. Among the curiously inscribed tombstones in the graveyards,
where even then six generations were lying, were not at all unfrequent
those that bore the legend "killed by a whale." Of the younger men in
the community, there were few who did not aspire to go abroad as
whalers, and their elders, though settled agriculturists nominally, or
even petty tradesmen, had generally "been a-whaling," loved to spin
yarns about their cruises, and were still more than semi-nautical in
speech, manners, and industries. They naturally spoke of "the bow" of
a horse, or his "port-quarter," as occasion might require; belonged to
shore whaling companies; fished for the New York market to a limited
extent, and perhaps did some smuggling; as shore-living people, in
those days, generally seemed to think they had an inherent right to.
In their little "sitting-rooms" were many curious and interesting
things, brought from far distant lands, such as broad branches of fan
coral, stuffed birds of brilliant plumage, strange shells and sperm
whales' teeth adorned with queer rude pictures scratched upon them by
sailors whose thoughts of loved ones at home had prompted them to such
artistic endeavor.
Between the villages were long reaches of woodland, or perhaps it
would be more correct to say thicket--broken here and there, where the
sandy soil seemed to give most promise, by tilled fields. Fierce
gales, through the long hard winter months, dealt cruelly with the
scrubby cedars and knotty little oaks in those woods, gnarling their
boughs, twisting their trunks, and stunting their growth, so that not
all the genial breath of spring, nor the ardent summer's sun could
quite repair the damage wrought them in the season of ice and storm.
But the hardy trees stood close together, as if seeking support and
consolation from each other in their hours of trial, when they creaked
and ground complaint to one another; so close that their interlaced
foliage kept always damp the leaf-strewn ground beneath, where the
fragrant trailing arbutus bloomed in earliest spring, and the tangled
whortleberry bushes later bore their clusters of bluish-purple fruit.
Here and there the dwarfed forest sloped gently down to broad expanses
of salt meadow, where snipe and plover found their favorite feeding
grounds among the rank rushes and long grass, or the soft marshy
slime, except when the full moon tides came rushing through the little
inlets between the white round sand dunes on the beach and, whelming
the lowland, snatched brown-leaf trophies from the very edges of the
wood. On the knolls between these meadows were favorite places for the
location of the homes of the earlier settlers, among whom were the Van
Deusts.
The Van Deust homestead was one of the oldest dwellings on that
portion of the island, and those who at this time inhabited it were
the direct descendants of other Van Deusts, whose remote existence and
remarkable longevity were alike attested by the quaintly graven
tombstones in the ancient graveyard of the village, a mile away.
It was a rambling one-story house, built of small logs covered with
boards now warped and rusty from age, but both roomy and comfortable
as well as picturesque. Those by whom it was erected loved better the
sea than the land, for they had not only sought out this, the most
commanding site they could obtain for its location, but had turned its
back upon the forest and the lane, and reared its broad porch upon the
side facing the ocean. Here, in the ample shade, the two old bachelor
brothers, its present occupants, inheriting as well the feeling as the
property of their ancestors, loved to linger. The ceaseless roar of
the waves was in their ears a wild tumultuous music, and their eyes
were never weary of the ever-changing beauty and glory of the world of
billows, blushing with the dawn, laughing with the noon, and frowning
beneath storm and night. Three broad and rugged elm trees shaded the
porch, and one gable of the house was rasped by the boughs of the
nearest tree of a thickly grown and badly cared for little orchard.
Bats and swallows flitted undisturbed in the summer evenings to and
from the low loft of the old homestead, through its various chinks and
refts; native song-birds build their nests and reared their young
under the eaves, and in the swinging branches of the venerable elms;
bees buzzed among the thick honeysuckle, and clematis vines that
twined about the pillar of the porch, and threw their long sprays in
flowery festoons between; and when the busy hum of those industrious
little toilers ceased at nightfall, the crickets' cheery chirp, from
among the rough stones of the old-fashioned fireplace within, took up
the refrain of insect melody. Neither insect, bird, nor beast feared
the two kindly old men who inhabited that home. One of the brothers
loved all living things, and was at peace with all, and the other was
like unto him, with the sole exception that he liked not women, nor
was willing to be at peace with them. Yet he had never been married!
Peter, the elder by a couple of years, was the woman hater, and to
such an extent did he carry his antipathy toward the sex, that he
would tolerate no other female servant about the house than old black
Betsy, who was the daughter of a couple of slaves his grandfather had
owned, and who thoroughly considered herself one of the family, as
indeed her indulgent masters regarded her. The three old people
occupied the house alone. Brother Jacob once hinted to Peter that
perhaps it might be as well to get a young woman to assist old Betsy
in her work, and his so doing brought on what was more like a quarrel
between him and Peter than anything that had disturbed the monotony of
their uneventful lives up to that time. A compromise was finally
effected, by virtue of which a neighbor was engaged to come over for a
couple of hours daily to do such chores about the house as the
brothers felt beyond their strength, and to bring his wife along on
Tuesdays to do the week's washing and scrubbing. But on Tuesdays Peter
always went a-fishing, regardless of the weather, and was gone all
day, so avoiding sight of the neighbor's wife. Whatever the secret
cause for his bitter and contemptuous aversion to women may have been,
he kept it to himself. That they were fair to look upon, he denied
not. "But," said he, "they are wrecker lights, and the truer and
better a man is, the brighter they shine to lure him to the breakers.
And look at yourself, Jacob," he would add, when his brother ventured
to mildly expostulate against the vigor of his denunciations of the
sex; whereupon Jacob would turn away with a sigh, and the discussion
would be at an end.
Back of the house a narrow lane, bordered by a neglected garden and a
cornfield beyond, led out to the distant highway. The Van Deust
brothers were not poor, as the humble style of their home might seem
to indicate; indeed they had the reputation, in all the country
around, of being wealthy, and were, at least, well off. The neglect
and indifference of age in its owners was the sole cause that the
surroundings of the old homestead, which might easily have been made
charming, presented such a picture of disorder and decay.
Up the little lane, at a very early hour one bright summer morning,
two men might have been seen, driving in a light gig, approaching the
Van Deust mansion. One of them was a stout, ruddy-faced gentleman, of
fifty, or thereabouts, known to everybody in the county as Squire
Bodley. His companion, who held the reins, was a handsome young fellow
of twenty-four or twenty-five years, rustic in personal appearance and
garb, with a good frank open countenance that bore a pleasing
expression of intelligence and good nature.
"Of course it's only a form, my going to be your security," said the
older man, as they jogged along, "for the Van Deusts know you as well
as I do, and knew your father, Dave Pawlett, before you, and a good
man he was. But still, Lem, I don't know any young fellow in all the
country round about that I'd take more pleasure in serving, even in a
matter of form, than you."
"Thank you, sir," replied the young man warmly, with a grateful flush
upon his sun-burnt cheeks. "It's very kind of you, I'm sure, and I
can't tell you how much I feel it so. You know I want the lease of
that lower farm, but you don't know how almightily much I want it; and
nobody does but me and--one other person, perhaps."
"Aha!" responded the Squire, with a chuckle, "I can make a guess about
who the other person is. And some day you and that other person will
be coming to me for a little business in my line, I reckon,--a sort of
mutual life lease, eh?"
"Well, maybe so, Squire. I hope so," answered Lem, confusedly, and
with a little deeper flush, "But here we are at the gate. Wait a
moment, while I jibe the bow wheels and make the horse fast."
As he spoke, he jumped lightly out of the vehicle, turned the horse a
little to one side, so as to make the descent of his companion more
convenient, and, after hitching the reins to a fence-post, accompanied
the Squire to the door of the house. There was no sound, or sign, as
yet, of any of the inmates of the old homestead being astir.
"Well, they must be late risers here," soliloquized the Squire, as Lem
rapped and called at the door.
At the end of a few minutes, a voice answered indistinctly from
within: "Who's there? What d'ye want?" And almost immediately after,
the shutters on the window of a little extension of the house, at the
end farthest from the orchard, were pushed open, and the head of an
aged black woman appeared with the echoing query, "Who dah? Wha' dy'e
wan'?"
"It's me--Squire Bodley," responded that gentleman, answering the
first inquirer.
Presently the door opened and Peter Van Deust appeared in it; a
weazened, thin little man, with a fringe of gray hair surrounding a
big white bald place on the top of his head, with a well-formed nose
and eyes still bright enough to suggest that he had been a
good-looking young fellow in his day; with lips that quivered, and
long lean fingers that trembled with the weakness of old age; but,
withal, a pleasant smile and a cheery ring, even yet, in his cracked
old voice.
"Why, Squire!" he exclaimed, as he threw open the door, "I'm real glad
to see you. And Lem! You, too? Well, this is a pleasant surprise-party
for us early in the morning!"
"It's not so very early, Peter," answered the Squire. "It is almost
seven o'clock."
"Is that so? Well, I declare! I wonder why Jacob isn't up. He's mostly
an early riser, and as he's the boy amongst us, why we old
folks--Betsy and me--rely on him to wake us up in the mornings. Old
people, you know, get back to being like babies again for wanting
their good sleep. But Jacob has overslept himself this morning, sure.
I'll soon roust him out, though."
As he spoke he went to a closed door at one side of the central
sitting-room, which was flanked by the separate apartments of the
brothers, and pounding upon it with his bony knuckles, called:
"Come, Jacob, bounce out, boy! You're late! It's breakfast time, and
we've got visitors. Get up!"
There was no answering sound from within. He waited a moment, then
knocked again, shouting: "Hello, Jacob! Jake! I say, get up! What' the
matter with you?"
Still there was no response. The three men waiting, held their breath
to listen, and a vague sense of uneasiness crept over them. The songs
of the blue-birds, and the chirp of the martens; the humming of the
bees; the stamping of the horse hitched to the gig, and the clatter
old Betsy made in opening her door, were all sharply distinct in the
quiet summer morning air; but from the closed room there was no sound
whatever. Peter tried the door, but it did not yield.
"He's locked his door!" exclaimed the old man, with an intonation of
surprise in his voice.
"Maybe something has happened to him," suggested Lem.
"What could happen to him? He was all right last night; never better
in his life. And he's younger than me. But it's queer he should have
locked his door. He don't mostly." He continued rapping and shouting
"Jacob, wake up!" in a more and more anxious tone.
"The key isn't in the keyhole, I guess," he muttered half to himself,
fumbling at the lock with a bit of stick he picked up from the floor,
"but," stooping down and trying to peer through, "I can't see
anything, because it's all dark inside."
"Haven't you some other key about the house that will fit the lock?"
asked the Squire.
"Yes. Mine does, I guess. But I didn't think of it at first. I'll try
it."
It fitted: the bolt was thrown back, and the door pushed open. The
sunshine darted in and fell, broad and clear, upon a still and ghastly
thing that laid in the middle of the floor--the corpse of an old man,
surrounded by a pool of blood.
Peter gave a wild cry of horror, and fell back senseless into the arms
of Lem Pawlett, who was close behind him. They laid him on the old
hair-cloth sofa in the sitting-room, called Betsy to attend to him,
and then passed into the chamber he had opened.
Murder had been done. Jacob Van Deust's skull had been beaten in by
some heavy instrument. One terrible crushing blow had mashed in his
left temple, and let out his little weak old life; but, as if for very
lust of killing the assassin had struck again and again, and the skull
was fractured in several places. The old man, it appeared, had risen
from his bed to meet his murderer, and had been struck down before he
could utter a cry of alarm. The window curtains were down, so that the
room was as yet only lighted from the door; but when those in front
were opened, and a flood of sunlight poured in, there were no
evidences apparent that there had been any struggle between the slayer
and his victim, nor were there at once visible any indications that
robbery, the only cause readily conceivable for the brutal murder of
such an inoffensive old man, had been the purpose instigating the
crime. The contents of the bureau drawers were much tumbled and
disordered, but it was presumable that they were so usually, through
the careless habits of the occupant of the apartment. There were no
marks of blood upon anything they contained, but it was evident that
the murderer had made some attempt at least to wipe his crimsoned
hands upon the old man's shirt after killing him, and that was
probably before he searched the bureau, if indeed he had troubled
himself to ransack it at all. On one pillow of the bed they found the
mark of a bloody hand. Perhaps the assassin was in such haste for
plunder that he groped where the old man's head had lain before
thinking of his bloody hand. Beyond that nothing appeared to them to
show that robbery had been done.
But when Peter Van Deust had sufficiently recovered to be able to
speak coherently, he said that his brother habitually kept, somewhere
in his room, a wallet containing something over three thousand
dollars, and a bag of coin; how much he did not know. These were
nowhere to be found.
Lem Pawlett was hastily dispatched by the Squire, soon after the
discovery of the crime, to summon some near neighbors; and as he drove
rapidly along the road, shouting to every person he saw--"Jacob Van
Deust has been murdered!"--it was but a very little while before a
dozen or more men were assembled at the scene of the crime. They were
all innocent, simple-minded folks, who had never seen a murdered man
before, had even been a little skeptical that such an awful thing as
murder was ever really done, except in the big cities where extreme
wickedness was naturally to be expected, and were actually stunned by
the shock of finding themselves in the presence of the evidences of
the perpetration of such a deed. From them, of course, no aid in
finding a clue to the perpetrator of the crime, or divining its real
motive, could have been expected. Yet every man of them was wise in
his own conceit, and among them were furtively exchanged whispers of
such hideous significance that the Squire, when they reached his ears,
felt himself compelled to take notice of and reply to them.
"The old men have been all the time quarrelling for two months past,"
said one to another.
"Yes," replied he who was addressed. "I've heard 'em myself, cussing
each other over the fortune that was left them."
"Sam Folsom," added a third, "told me that he'd heard that Peter had
threatened to knock Jake's head off more than once."
"Oh! I've heard that myself," chimed in another. "And I did hear that
they'd had a regular fight and Jake got the best of it."
"It's awful that two old men like them, on the edge of the grave, as
you may say, and brothers at that, should quarrel about money."
"And one for to go and kill the other."
At this point the Squire, who had overheard much of the preceding
conversation, interposed: "How do you know," he demanded abruptly,
turning on the last speaker, "who killed him?"
"Well, I dunno exactly, of course," whined the fellow, hesitatingly,
"but it looks mighty like it."
"Ah! And that pimpled nose of yours, Rufe Stevens, looks mightily like
you were a hard drinker; but you are ready to take your Bible oath
it's nothing but bad humors in your blood."
There were a few suppressed chuckles at the Squire's retort from those
in the vicinity--for men will laugh even at the smallest things, and
in the very presence of the King of Terrors--and Rufe moved away,
muttering indistinctly. But the Squire's interference and
well-intended reproof had only a momentary effect in diverting the
attention of the neighbors from the evil bent of suspicion their minds
had taken; and they continued exchanging, and possibly augmenting, the
rumors they had heard of differences between the Van Deust brothers,
until the sentiment was general among them that Peter Van Deust should
be at once arrested for the murder of his brother.