THE OPENING OF A VISTA.
FOR a man who had taken so much tonic, Adam had but indifferent relish
for the savory and altogether comforting little dinner which Goodwife
Phipps had kept all warm and waiting for the coming of her guests. His
head was filled with love and with altercations between hope that Garde
had meant this and fears that she might have meant that, and with
conjuring up all her speeches and glances, till he could hardly have
told whether he was afoot or horseback.
But if their leader neglected his opportunities, the beef-eaters made
good the reputation for three, as swordsmen with knife and fork.
Fortunately Goodwife Phipps had provided amply. But a fowl became a
glistening skeleton; a hot meat-pie was represented at last by a dish
that yawned like an empty chasm; a pyramid of Indian maize became a
scattered wreckage of cobs, and potatoes, bread and pudding vanished
into mere memories of what they once had been.
Adam, although he said nothing, talked like an auctioneer, during the
meal, to divert what he could of the attention which his retinue
perforce attracted to their appetites. This innocent ruse was not lost
on the charming little wife of William Phipps. She was a sweet little
woman, plump, black-haired, brown-eyed and gifted by Nature with much
vivacity, in her wit and in her engaging manners. She was older than her
husband, having been the widow of one merchant Hull, when she and the
Captain wedded. They were a happy couple, being indeed un-Puritanly
joyous in their partnership. She had taken a great liking to Adam, when
Phipps first brought him home. Now that he was a man, she liked him none
the less, yet she saw that he would always be a big, straightforward
boy. She watched him now with pleasure, listening to his quips and
sallies of nonsense, and nodding motherly at his evident concern for his
two forlorn beef-eaters, so obviously attached to him by ties of
affection.
The dinner being at length come to an end, with great satisfaction to
all concerned, Adam counseled the expanded beef-eaters to fare to the
Crow and Arrow, lest in their absence anything befall to prevent their
occupancy of the selected apartments. As nothing was to be had to drink
where they were, the worthy two were glad to act upon his suggestion.
Accordingly Adam and his hosts were left to themselves, whereupon they
fell upon a banquet of narrative and reminiscence forthwith.
“Now, Adam, tell us all about where you have been, and what you have
done, and all about everything,” said Mrs. Phipps, putting her plump
elbows on the table, which she had swiftly cleared of the dinner
wreckage. “Just begin at the day you left, with William, and tell us all
there is. But tell us first, have you fallen in love? Of course you must
have, but I do hope you will like one of our own girls best.”
“I fear you would have me begin at the last end first, after all,” said
Adam, thinking how recently he had fallen victim to Eros. “My tale is
brief and of no interest. William bade me cultivate the society of
gentlemen, when he sent me to England. Well, I had fencing and fiddling
of an Italian nobleman; I have fought with holy friars and princes; I
have sworn strange oaths with prelates and bishops; I have danced with
nuns and duchesses; I have ridden to hounds with curs and Kings. If I
have not learned drinking, gambling, love-making, dueling, swearing and
sundry other pretty accomplishments, then beshrew me for a clod and call
the court no place for schooling. I am richer than I was, since I may
look up at any moment and see you both at a glance. By the same token I
am happier. As to my heart, I’ll take oath I left it in Boston. And
there you have me.”
“Oh, this sounds very naughty indeed,” said Mrs. Phipps.
“I never counseled you to apprentice yourself to the devil,” said
Phipps. “You were first to learn navigation, of some——”
“Oh, of that I neglected to speak,” interrupted the rover. “William, you
will never make an anchor out of sea foam, nor a solid ship’s master out
of me, else my first or my last preceptor would have finished me off
roundly.”
“Who was your latest chief?” the Captain inquired.
“Captain William Kidd,” said Adam, “a generous friend, a fearless and
skilful seaman, and as bold a fighting man as ever clutched a hilt. I
met him at Barcelona, shipped with him for Bristol, fell in with my
beef-eaters, got rid of my money and pushed my sword through a pup—Lord
Something-or-other——and was still in time to catch Captain Kidd at
Portsmouth for New York. But I can’t bark enough for a sea-dog, as Kidd
was good enough to tell me himself.”
William Phipps nodded and nodded. Outwardly he was calm enough; inwardly
he stewed with heat. Adam had but added fuel to the fever of unrest and
thirst for adventure with which he had been born. He was not jealous of
all that his protégé had accomplished ahead of himself—indeed, he had
furthered the lad’s advancement, at the expense of his own sense of
bereavement when he and Adam parted,—but he was consumed with impatience
to be hewing at the great career for which he had from boyhood felt
himself destined. A light of determination burned in his eyes. He saw
that the boy before him had utterly outstripped him—the boy to whom he
had imparted all his own meager, self-acquired education. Not for a
moment did he regret that from Hispaniola he had sent the lad to
England, with a fellow-captain, nor would he for any price have stripped
his protégé of one single experience, but his mouth grew dry with the
lust for adventure that was glowing within him.
His wife saw these indications. She understood what was passing in his
mind. Before she had even sighed to herself, as a woman must, who feels
herself on the brink of a separation from one she truly loves, she
consented mentally to what she knew he would presently suggest. What she
was thus prepared for, came sooner than she had expected it might.
“Adam,” said Phipps, somewhat huskily, “I have been waiting for
something—I never knew what—to come along and start me off after the
fortune I have promised to get for the wife.”
“You are fortune enough for me, dear,” Mrs. Phipps interposed, in spite
of herself. “I should be satisfied to live like this forever.”
“I know,” said the Captain, “but I promised you should have a fair brick
house in the Green Lane, to the north, and I mean that you shall have
it. Adam, you are the something I have been waiting for, but what with
my worrying, over thinking you probably dead, I have never realized the
truth till this night.”
“And what may it be my privilege to do?” said Adam.
“Go with me to recover a fortune, sunk in a wreck. She rests on a reef
in the Bahamas, in a few fathoms of water. She was laded with gold and
went down with every ounce. I’ve got the maps, and now that I’ve got
you, bless your heart, we can sail in a week!”
“And how have you learned of this sunken treasure?” said Adam, who for
some reason appeared not at all boyishly eager to set off on this new
adventure. “Has somebody given you this tale and the maps as the price
for a well-built brig?”
“I had the information from a Spaniard, who died at my ship-yard,” said
Phipps. “He was the sole survivor of the wrecked vessel. I gave him
work. He was grateful. Death seized him suddenly, but before the end
came, he told me his tale, he said, as a measure of gratitude, directing
me to feel in his pockets for the maps, which I did. I have waited for
what I now am certain was your return.”
“Well,” said Adam, thoughtfully, twisting the ends of his small
mustache, “you couldn’t easily have paid me a greater compliment, I am
sure; but, my dear friend, you place me in an awkward position.”
“Awkward position? What awkward position?” said Phipps. “Here you are a
good swordsman, a man of some knowledge, and the companion I would
select of all the men I know.” Here Adam bowed solemnly. “Now what is to
hinder us from making this venture together? What do you mean by this
awkward position business?”
“I mean,” said the rover, “that I seem to serve no better purpose, the
moment I return to Boston, than to separate you two good people. Now I
am sensitive about a thing like that. I don’t like to be the cause of
such a separation.”
“What nonsense, you——” started the Captain.
“I prepared my mind for William’s adventure, long ago,” interrupted Mrs.
Phipps. “If he doesn’t go with you, he will go with some one else. And
as long as he is bent on going in the end, I should feel so much better,
Adam, if you were with him.”
Adam bowed to them both, again. He was glad to do this, as he was, in
point of fact, somewhat confused as to what to say.
“There, you young rascal,” said Phipps, “that knocks away your shores
and you are launched before you know it.”
“But,” suggested Adam, with an air of great solicitude for his friend’s
interests, “do you really think any wild-goose chase of this description
could be as solid and certain and wholesome as the ship-building
business? Would I be justified in encouraging you, Captain Phipps, to
leave your established business for such a wild——”
“Wild?” interposed Phipps. “You—you—now look here, what do you mean—you,
by your own accounts, the wildest young scamp afloat? Wild? As if
anything could be too wild for you. There is something at the bottom of
all this. Now out with it!”
“Why, William!” said Goodwife Phipps, “where are your eyes? Why, Adam
must have a sweetheart in Boston!”
Rust flushed hotly. His eyes would not, for all his pulling at them,
refrain from dancing. He conjured up an immediate fit of coughing, and
therefore held a handkerchief before his face.
Phipps looked at him suspiciously. “Is that what ails you?” he demanded.
“Is that why you are so hot to remain here in Boston?”
“Now I leave it to you both, as two good, sensible people,” said Rust,
artfully, “how could such a catastrophe have happened? I left Boston
seven years ago, while a mere cub, and I have been here now less than
that many hours. Do you think that between sunset and my coming here I
could have saved some fair angel’s life—or the life of her—her—well, say
her pet panther? Does that seem likely, or reasonable, say?”
“I wouldn’t dare trust you not to be saving a dozen,” grumbled Phipps.
“When a man has associated with gentlemen, you never can reckon on his
conduct.”
“Of course it does seem absurd, Adam, I admit,” said Mrs. Phipps, who
was enjoying the conversation mightily. “I had to make some suggestion.
And—oh, why, perhaps some young lady has recently arrived here from the
old country. Is that it, Adam?”
“I give you my word of honor that no young lady has come to Boston,
since I went abroad, for whom I care a brass farthing,” Adam assured his
hostess. “The further you go in this, the more innocent you will find
me.”
“Then are you turned lazy, or what is it that ails you,” inquired the
Captain, “that you fail to leap, as, by my word, I had thought you
would, to embrace this opportunity?”
“Oh, oh, poor dear Adam,” said the Captain’s wife, interrupting any
answer Rust might have been framing, “perhaps I know what it is, at
last.” She went to her husband quickly and whispered something in his
ear.
“Hum!” said Phipps, who was inclined to be a bit short with his protégé
for his many equivocal answers, “Why couldn’t he say so at once? See
here, Adam, what’s all this rigmarole about your pride? If you haven’t
got any money, what’s the odds to me? Who’s asking you to furnish any
funds? I’ve got the brig and I’ve got provisions and arms in plenty. If
that is what ails you, drop it, sir, drop it!”
Adam, willing to share another’s money as readily as he would give his
own last penny to a friend, had thought of nothing half so remote as
this to offer as an excuse for remaining in Boston, under the same sky
with Garde. But now that it was broached, he fathered it as quickly and
affectionately as if he had indeed been its parent.
“I had hoped it would not be unreasonable for me to crave a few days’
grace before giving you my answer to your generous proposition,” he
said, “for I am not without hopes of replenishing our treasury at an
early date.”
“But in the meantime——” started Phipps.
“Dearest,” interrupted his wife, with feminine tenderness of thought for
any innocent pride, “surely you have no mind to sail to-night? And there
are so many things for Adam to tell.”
The Captain, who had been drawing down his brow, in that serious
keep-at-it spirit which through all his life was the backbone of his
remarkable, self-made success, slacked off the intensity of his mood and
smiled at his wife, indulgently. He loved her and he loved Adam above
anything else in the world.
“Get you behind me, golden treasure,” he said, with a wave of his big,
wholesome hand. “Adam, I would rather hear you talk than to pocket
rubies.”
“I must be cautious lest I bankrupt myself by telling all I know this
evening,” said Adam. “Indeed, dear friends, it grows late already. I
must set my beef-eaters the good example of keeping seemly hours.” He
arose to go before the sunken treasure topic should again break out,
with its many fascinations and pitfalls.
His hosts protested against his leaving, yet they presently discovered
that the hour was, as he said, no longer early. He therefore departed
and wended his way through the now deserted streets, toward the Crow and
Arrow, his heart bounding with joyousness, his brain awhirl with
memories of everything of the evening, save the discussion of the sunken
treasure.
------------------------------------------------------------------------