LITTLE ADVENTURERS
The little boy who had been added to the family of Zephaniah Pennel and
his wife soon became a source of grave solicitude to that mild and
long-suffering woman. For, as the reader may have seen, he was a
resolute, self-willed little elf, and whatever his former life may have
been, it was quite evident that these traits had been developed without
any restraint.
Mrs. Pennel, whose whole domestic experience had consisted in rearing
one very sensitive and timid daughter, who needed for her development
only an extreme of tenderness, and whose conscientiousness was a law
unto herself, stood utterly confounded before the turbulent little
spirit to which her loving-kindness had opened so ready an asylum, and
she soon discovered that it is one thing to take a human being to bring
up, and another to know what to do with it after it is taken.
The child had the instinctive awe of Zephaniah which his manly nature
and habits of command were fitted to inspire, so that morning and
evening, when he was at home, he was demure enough; but while the good
man was away all day, and sometimes on fishing excursions which often
lasted a week, there was a chronic state of domestic warfare--a
succession of skirmishes, pitched battles, long treaties, with divers
articles of capitulation, ending, as treaties are apt to do, in open
rupture on the first convenient opportunity.
Mrs. Pennel sometimes reflected with herself mournfully, and with many
self-disparaging sighs, what was the reason that young master somehow
contrived to keep her far more in awe of him than he was of her. Was she
not evidently, as yet at least, bigger and stronger than he, able to
hold his rebellious little hands, to lift and carry him, and to shut him
up, if so she willed, in a dark closet, and even to administer to him
that discipline of the birch which Mrs. Kittridge often and forcibly
recommended as the great secret of her family prosperity? Was it not her
duty, as everybody told her, to break his will while he was young?--a
duty which hung like a millstone round the peaceable creature's neck,
and weighed her down with a distressing sense of responsibility.
Now, Mrs. Pennel was one of the people to whom self-sacrifice is
constitutionally so much a nature, that self-denial for her must have
consisted in standing up for her own rights, or having her own way when
it crossed the will and pleasure of any one around her. All she wanted
of a child, or in fact of any human creature, was something to love and
serve. We leave it entirely to theologians to reconcile such facts with
the theory of total depravity; but it is a fact that there are a
considerable number of women of this class. Their life would flow on
very naturally if it might consist only in giving, never in
withholding--only in praise, never in blame--only in acquiescence, never
in conflict; and the chief comfort of such women in religion is that it
gives them at last an object for love without criticism, and for whom
the utmost degree of self-abandonment is not idolatry, but worship.
Mrs. Pennel would gladly have placed herself and all she possessed at
the disposition of the children; they might have broken her china, dug
in the garden with her silver spoons, made turf alleys in her best room,
drummed on her mahogany tea-table, filled her muslin drawer with their
choicest shells and seaweed; only Mrs. Pennel knew that such kindness
was no kindness, and that in the dreadful word responsibility, familiar
to every New England mother's ear, there lay an awful summons to deny
and to conflict where she could so much easier have conceded.
She saw that the tyrant little will would reign without mercy, if it
reigned at all; and ever present with her was the uneasy sense that it
was her duty to bring this erratic little comet within the laws of a
well-ordered solar system,--a task to which she felt about as competent
as to make a new ring for Saturn. Then, too, there was a secret feeling,
if the truth must be told, of what Mrs. Kittridge would think about it;
for duty is never more formidable than when she gets on the cap and gown
of a neighbor; and Mrs. Kittridge, with her resolute voice and
declamatory family government, had always been a secret source of
uneasiness to poor Mrs. Pennel, who was one of those sensitive souls who
can feel for a mile or more the sphere of a stronger neighbor. During
all the years that they had lived side by side, there had been this
shadowy, unconfessed feeling on the part of poor Mrs. Pennel, that Mrs.
Kittridge thought her deficient in her favorite virtue of "resolution,"
as, in fact, in her inmost soul she knew she was;--but who wants to have
one's weak places looked into by the sharp eyes of a neighbor who is
strong precisely where we are weak? The trouble that one neighbor may
give to another, simply by living within a mile of one, is incredible;
but until this new accession to her family, Mrs. Pennel had always been
able to comfort herself with the idea that the child under her
particular training was as well-behaved as any of those of her more
demonstrative friend. But now, all this consolation had been put to
flight; she could not meet Mrs. Kittridge without most humiliating
recollections.
On Sundays, when those sharp black eyes gleamed upon her through the
rails of the neighboring pew, her very soul shrank within her, as she
recollected all the compromises and defeats of the week before. It
seemed to her that Mrs. Kittridge saw it all,--how she had ingloriously
bought peace with gingerbread, instead of maintaining it by rightful
authority,--how young master had sat up till nine o'clock on divers
occasions, and even kept little Mara up for his lordly pleasure.
How she trembled at every movement of the child in the pew, dreading
some patent and open impropriety which should bring scandal on her
government! This was the more to be feared, as the first effort to
initiate the youthful neophyte in the decorums of the sanctuary had
proved anything but a success,--insomuch that Zephaniah Pennel had been
obliged to carry him out from the church; therefore, poor Mrs. Pennel
was thankful every Sunday when she got her little charge home without
any distinct scandal and breach of the peace.
But, after all, he was such a handsome and engaging little wretch,
attracting all eyes wherever he went, and so full of saucy drolleries,
that it seemed to Mrs. Pennel that everything and everybody conspired to
help her spoil him. There are two classes of human beings in this world:
one class seem made to give love, and the other to take it. Now Mrs.
Pennel and Mara belonged to the first class, and little Master Moses to
the latter.
It was, perhaps, of service to the little girl to give to her delicate,
shrinking, highly nervous organization the constant support of a
companion so courageous, so richly blooded, and highly vitalized as the
boy seemed to be. There was a fervid, tropical richness in his air that
gave one a sense of warmth in looking at him, and made his Oriental name
seem in good-keeping. He seemed an exotic that might have waked up under
fervid Egyptian suns, and been found cradled among the lotus blossoms of
old Nile; and the fair golden-haired girl seemed to be gladdened by his
companionship, as if he supplied an element of vital warmth to her
being. She seemed to incline toward him as naturally as a needle to a
magnet.
The child's quickness of ear and the facility with which he picked up
English were marvelous to observe. Evidently, he had been somewhat
accustomed to the sound of it before, for there dropped out of his
vocabulary, after he began to speak, phrases which would seem to betoken
a longer familiarity with its idioms than could be equally accounted for
by his present experience. Though the English evidently was not his
native language, there had yet apparently been some effort to teach it
to him, although the terror and confusion of the shipwreck seemed at
first to have washed every former impression from his mind.
But whenever any attempt was made to draw him to speak of the past, of
his mother, or of where he came from, his brow lowered gloomily, and he
assumed that kind of moody, impenetrable gravity, which children at
times will so strangely put on, and which baffle all attempts to look
within them. Zephaniah Pennel used to call it putting up his
dead-lights. Perhaps it was the dreadful association of agony and terror
connected with the shipwreck, that thus confused and darkened the mirror
of his mind the moment it was turned backward; but it was thought wisest
by his new friends to avoid that class of subjects altogether--indeed,
it was their wish that he might forget the past entirely, and remember
them as his only parents.
Miss Roxy and Miss Ruey came duly, as appointed, to initiate the young
pilgrim into the habiliments of a Yankee boy, endeavoring, at the same
time, to drop into his mind such seeds of moral wisdom as might make the
internal economy in time correspond to the exterior. But Miss Roxy
declared that "of all the children that ever she see, he beat all for
finding out new mischief,--the moment you'd make him understand he
mustn't do one thing, he was right at another."
One of his exploits, however, had very nearly been the means of cutting
short the materials of our story in the outset.
It was a warm, sunny afternoon, and the three women, being busy together
with their stitching, had tied a sun-bonnet on little Mara, and turned
the two loose upon the beach to pick up shells. All was serene, and
quiet, and retired, and no possible danger could be apprehended. So up
and down they trotted, till the spirit of adventure which ever burned in
the breast of little Moses caught sight of a small canoe which had been
moored just under the shadow of a cedar-covered rock. Forthwith he
persuaded his little neighbor to go into it, and for a while they made
themselves very gay, rocking it from side to side.
The tide was going out, and each retreating wave washed the boat up and
down, till it came into the boy's curly head how beautiful it would be
to sail out as he had seen men do,--and so, with much puffing and
earnest tugging of his little brown hands, the boat at last was loosed
from her moorings and pushed out on the tide, when both children laughed
gayly to find themselves swinging and balancing on the amber surface,
and watching the rings and sparkles of sunshine and the white pebbles
below. Little Moses was glorious,--his adventures had begun,--and with a
fairy-princess in his boat, he was going to stretch away to some of the
islands of dreamland. He persuaded Mara to give him her pink sun-bonnet,
which he placed for a pennon on a stick at the end of the boat, while he
made a vehement dashing with another, first on one side of the boat and
then on the other,--spattering the water in diamond showers, to the
infinite amusement of the little maiden.
Meanwhile the tide waves danced them out and still outward, and as they
went farther and farther from shore, the more glorious felt the boy. He
had got Mara all to himself, and was going away with her from all grown
people, who wouldn't let children do as they pleased,--who made them sit
still in prayer-time, and took them to meeting, and kept so many things
which they must not touch, or open, or play with. Two white sea-gulls
came flying toward the children, and they stretched their little arms in
welcome, nothing doubting but these fair creatures were coming at once
to take passage with them for fairy-land. But the birds only dived and
shifted and veered, turning their silvery sides toward the sun, and
careering in circles round the children. A brisk little breeze, that
came hurrying down from the land, seemed disposed to favor their
unsubstantial enterprise,--for your winds, being a fanciful, uncertain
tribe of people, are always for falling in with anything that is
contrary to common sense. So the wind trolled them merrily along,
nothing doubting that there might be time, if they hurried, to land
their boat on the shore of some of the low-banked red clouds that lay in
the sunset, where they could pick up shells,--blue and pink and
purple,--enough to make them rich for life. The children were all
excitement at the rapidity with which their little bark danced and
rocked, as it floated outward to the broad, open ocean; at the blue,
freshening waves, at the silver-glancing gulls, at the floating,
white-winged ships, and at vague expectations of going rapidly
somewhere, to something more beautiful still. And what is the happiness
of the brightest hours of grown people more than this?
"Roxy," said Aunt Ruey innocently, "seems to me I haven't heard nothin'
o' them children lately. They're so still, I'm 'fraid there's some
mischief."
"Well, Ruey, you jist go and give a look at 'em," said Miss Roxy. "I
declare, that boy! I never know what he will do next; but there didn't
seem to be nothin' to get into out there but the sea, and the beach is
so shelving, a body can't well fall into that."
Alas! good Miss Roxy, the children are at this moment tilting up and
down on the waves, half a mile out to sea, as airily happy as the
sea-gulls; and little Moses now thinks, with glorious scorn, of you and
your press-board, as of grim shadows of restraint and bondage that shall
never darken his free life more.
Both Miss Roxy and Mrs. Pennel were, however, startled into a paroxysm
of alarm when poor Miss Ruey came screaming, as she entered the door,--
"As sure as you're alive, them chil'en are off in the boat,--they're out
to sea, sure as I'm alive! What shall we do? The boat'll upset, and the
sharks'll get 'em."
Miss Roxy ran to the window, and saw dancing and courtesying on the blue
waves the little pinnace, with its fanciful pink pennon fluttered gayly
by the indiscreet and flattering wind.
Poor Mrs. Pennel ran to the shore, and stretched her arms wildly, as if
she would have followed them across the treacherous blue floor that
heaved and sparkled between them.
"Oh, Mara, Mara! Oh, my poor little girl! Oh, poor children!"
"Well, if ever I see such a young un as that," soliloquized Miss Roxy
from the chamber-window; "there they be, dancin' and giggitin' about;
they'll have the boat upset in a minit, and the sharks are waitin' for
'em, no doubt. _I_ b'lieve that ar young un's helped by the Evil
One,--not a boat round, else I'd push off after 'em. Well, I don't see
but we must trust in the Lord,--there don't seem to be much else to
trust to," said the spinster, as she drew her head in grimly.
To say the truth, there was some reason for the terror of these most
fearful suggestions; for not far from the place where the children
embarked was Zephaniah's fish-drying ground, and multitudes of sharks
came up with every rising tide, allured by the offal that was here
constantly thrown into the sea. Two of these prowlers, outward-bound
from their quest, were even now assiduously attending the little boat,
and the children derived no small amusement from watching their motions
in the pellucid water,--the boy occasionally almost upsetting the boat
by valorous plunges at them with his stick. It was the most exhilarating
and piquant entertainment he had found for many a day; and little Mara
laughed in chorus at every lunge that he made.
What would have been the end of it all, it is difficult to say, had not
some mortal power interfered before they had sailed finally away into
the sunset. But it so happened, on this very afternoon, Rev. Mr. Sewell
was out in a boat, busy in the very apostolic employment of catching
fish, and looking up from one of the contemplative pauses which his
occupation induced, he rubbed his eyes at the apparition which presented
itself. A tiny little shell of a boat came drifting toward him, in which
was a black-eyed boy, with cheeks like a pomegranate and lustrous
tendrils of silky dark hair, and a little golden-haired girl, white as a
water-lily, and looking ethereal enough to have risen out of the
sea-foam. Both were in the very sparkle and effervescence of that
fanciful glee which bubbles up from the golden, untried fountains of
early childhood. Mr. Sewell, at a glance, comprehended the whole, and at
once overhauling the tiny craft, he broke the spell of fairy-land, and
constrained the little people to return to the confines, dull and
dreary, of real and actual life.
Neither of them had known a doubt or a fear in that joyous trance of
forbidden pleasure which shadowed with so many fears the wiser and more
far-seeing heads and hearts of the grown people; nor was there enough
language yet in common between the two classes to make the little ones
comprehend the risk they had run. Perhaps so do our elder brothers, in
our Father's house, look anxiously out when we are sailing gayly over
life's sea,--over unknown depths,--amid threatening monsters,--but want
words to tell us why what seems so bright is so dangerous.
Duty herself could not have worn a more rigid aspect than Miss Roxy, as
she stood on the beach, press-board in hand; for she had forgotten to
lay it down in the eagerness of her anxiety. She essayed to lay hold of
the little hand of Moses to pull him from the boat, but he drew back,
and, looking at her with a world of defiance in his great eyes, jumped
magnanimously upon the beach. The spirit of Sir Francis Drake and of
Christopher Columbus was swelling in his little body, and was he to be
brought under by a dry-visaged woman with a press-board? In fact,
nothing is more ludicrous about the escapades of children than the utter
insensibility they feel to the dangers they have run, and the light
esteem in which they hold the deep tragedy they create.
That night, when Zephaniah, in his evening exercise, poured forth most
fervent thanksgivings for the deliverance, while Mrs. Pennel was sobbing
in her handkerchief, Miss Roxy was much scandalized by seeing the young
cause of all the disturbance sitting upon his heels, regarding the
emotion of the kneeling party with his wide bright eyes, without a wink
of compunction.
"Well, for her part," she said, "she hoped Cap'n Pennel would be blessed
in takin' that ar boy; but she was sure she didn't see much that looked
like it now."
* * * * *
The Rev. Mr. Sewell fished no more that day, for the draught from
fairy-land with which he had filled his boat brought up many thoughts
into his mind, which he pondered anxiously.
"Strange ways of God," he thought, "that should send to my door this
child, and should wash upon the beach the only sign by which he could be
identified. To what end or purpose? Hath the Lord a will in this
matter, and what is it?"
So he thought as he slowly rowed homeward, and so did his thoughts work
upon him that half way across the bay to Harpswell he slackened his oar
without knowing it, and the boat lay drifting on the purple and
gold-tinted mirror, like a speck between two eternities. Under such
circumstances, even heads that have worn the clerical wig for years at
times get a little dizzy and dreamy. Perhaps it was because of the
impression made upon him by the sudden apparition of those great dark
eyes and sable curls, that he now thought of the boy that he had found
floating that afternoon, looking as if some tropical flower had been
washed landward by a monsoon; and as the boat rocked and tilted, and the
minister gazed dreamily downward into the wavering rings of purple,
orange, and gold which spread out and out from it, gradually it seemed
to him that a face much like the child's formed itself in the waters;
but it was the face of a girl, young and radiantly beautiful, yet with
those same eyes and curls,--he saw her distinctly, with her thousand
rings of silky hair, bound with strings of pearls and clasped with
strange gems, and she raised one arm imploringly to him, and on the
wrist he saw the bracelet embroidered with seed pearls, and the letters
D.M. "Ah, Dolores," he said, "well wert thou called so. Poor Dolores! I
cannot help thee."
"What am I dreaming of?" said the Rev. Mr. Sewell. "It is my Thursday
evening lecture on Justification, and Emily has got tea ready, and here
I am catching cold out on the bay."