THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE
Sadly returning home, Laura stopped for a moment at her garden gate
to make quite sure her father was not in the side yard. With all her
girlish dreams broken and draggled, the heartbroken girl stood looking
at the flowers that only an hour before had seemed so wondrous gay. And
all at once she heard the sound of wheels upon the road. Turning, she
saw old Captain Briggs and Dr. Filhiol slowly driving toward Snug Haven.
Half-minded to retreat inside the garden, still she stood there, for
already Captain Briggs had raised a hand in greeting. Every feature of
the old captain’s face was limned with grief. His shoulders seemed to
sag, bowed down with heavier weight than his almost eighty years could
pile upon them.
So the girl remained at the gate, greatly sorrowing; and peered after
the two old men. Though she could not guess the captain’s trouble, her
woman’s instinct told her this trouble bore on Hal. And over her own
grief settled still another cloud that darkened it still more.
Puzzled, disillusioned, she swung the gate and entered the prim paths
bordered with low box-hedges. No one saw her. Quietly she entered the
house and crept up-stairs to her own room. There, in that virginal
place, she dropped down on her old-fashioned, four-posted bed of black
walnut, and buried her face in the same pillows to which, girl-like,
she had often confided so many innocent and tender dreams.
As the girl lay there, crying for the broken bauble, love, crushed in
the brutal hand of Hal, old Captain Briggs and Dr. Filhiol—once more
back on the quarterdeck of Snug Haven—settled themselves for dejected
consultation.
“I never did expect ’twould be as much as that,” the captain said,
mechanically stuffing his pipe. “I reckoned maybe fifty dollars would
pay demurrage and repairs on Mac. McLaughlin isn’t worth more, rig and
all. But, Judas priest, two hundred and a half! That’s running into
money. Money I can ill afford to pay, sir!”
“I know,” the doctor answered. “It’s cruel extortion. But what can you
do, captain? McLaughlin holds the tiller now. He can steer any course
he chooses. The fact that he started at five hundred, plus the apology
that he demands from Hal on the deck of the _Sylvia_ in front of the
whole crew, and that we’ve pared him down to two hundred and fifty,
plus the apology—that’s a very great gain. It’s bad, I know, but not
so bad as having had the boy locked up, charged with felonious assault.
It’s not so bad as that, sir!”
“No, no, of course not,” Briggs agreed. “I suppose I’ve got to pay,
though Lord knows, sir, the money’s needed terribly for other things,
now that the college bill has got to be settled all over again!”
“I know it’s hard,” sympathized the doctor, “but there’s no help for
it. Wipe the slate clean, and give Hal another start. That’s all you
_can_ do.”
The old captain remained smoking and brooding a while, with sunshine
on his head. At last his eyes sought the far, deep line of blue that
stretched against the horizon—the sea-line, lacking which the old man
always sensed a vacancy, a loss.
“Close on to six bells,” judged he, “by the way the sun’s shining on
the water. Wonder where the boy can be? I’ve got to have a proper gam
with him.”
“Why? Where ought he to be?” the doctor asked.
“He must have put back into port, after his little cruise with Laura,
this morning. We sighted her, moored at her front gate, you remember?”
“H-m! You don’t suppose there’s trouble brewing there too, do you? I
thought the girl looked upset, didn’t you?”
“_I_ didn’t notice anything. What seemed to be the matter?”
“I thought she’d been crying a bit.”
The captain clenched his fist.
“By the Judas priest!” he exclaimed fervently. “If I thought Hal had
been abusing that girl, I’d make it hot for him! That’s _one_ thing I
won’t stand!” He peered down the road with narrowing eyes, then got up
and went to the front door. “Hal, oh, Hal!” he cried.
No answer. The captain’s voice echoed emptily in the old-fashioned
hallway.
“Not here, anyhow,” said he, returning to his rocker. “Well, we won’t
accuse him of anything else till we know. I only hope he hasn’t written
any more black pages on the log by mishandling Laura.”
Wearily his eyes sought Croft Hill. Of a sudden unbidden tears blurred
his sight.
“_There’s_ a peaceful harbor for old, battered craft, anyhow,” he
murmured, pointing. “I sometimes envy all the tired folk that’s found
sleep and rest up there in their snug berths, while we still stand
watch in all weathers. If, after all I’ve worked and hoped for, there’s
nothing ahead but breakers, I’ll envy them more than ever.”
“Come now, captain!” Filhiol tried to cheer him. “Maybe it was only a
little lovers’ quarrel that sent Laura home. There’s never all smooth
sailing, with maid and man for a crew. Let’s wait a while and see.”
“Yes, wait and think it over,” said the captain. “There’s only one
place for me, doctor, when things look squally, and that’s with my
folks on the hill. Guess I’ll take a walk up there now and talk it over
with them. Come with me, will you?”
Filhiol shook his head.
“Too much for me, that hill is,” he answered. “If you don’t mind, I’ll
sit right here and watch the sea.”
“Suit yourself, doctor.” And Captain Briggs arose. “When Ezra comes
down the lane tell him not to bother with dinner. A little snack will
do. Let’s each of us think this thing out, and maybe we can chart the
proper course between us.”
He stood a moment in the sunshine, then, bare-headed, went down the
steps and turned into the path that would lead him up Croft Hill. He
stopped, gathering a handful of bright flowers—zinnias, hollyhocks,
sweet peas—for his ever-remembered dead. Then he went on again.
“Poor old chap!” said Dr. Filhiol. “The curse is biting pretty deep.
That’s all poppycock, that Malay cursing; but the curses of heredity
are stern reality. There’s a specific for every poison in the world.
Even the dread _curaré_ has one. But for the poison of heredity, what
remedy is there? Poor old captain!”
Alpheus Briggs, with bowed head, climbed up the winding way among the
blackberry bushes, the sumacs and wild roses dainty-sweet; and so at
last came to the wall pierced with the whitewashed gate that he himself
kept always in repair.
Into the cemetery, his Garden of Gethsemane, he penetrated, by paths
flanked with simple and pious stones, many of hard slate carved with
death’s-heads, urns, cherubs and weeping-willows, according to the
custom of the ancient, godly days. Thus to his family burial lot he
came, and there laid his offering upon the graves he loved; and then
sat down upon the bench there, for meditation in this hour of sorrow
and perplexity.
And as sun and sky and sea, fresh breeze and drifting cloud, and the
mild influences of his lifelong friend, tobacco, all worked their
soothings on him, he presently plucked up a little heart once more. The
nearness of his dead bade him have hope and courage. He felt, in that
quiet and solemn place, the tightening of his family bonds; he felt
that duty called him to lift even these new and heavy burdens, to bear
them valiantly and like a man.
With the graves about him and the sea before, and over all the
heavens, calm returned. And sorrow—which, like anger, cannot long be
keen—faded into another thought: the thought of how he should make of
Hal the man that he would have him be.
How restful was this sunlit hilltop, where he knew that soon he, too,
must sleep! The faint, far cries of gulls drifted in to him with the
bell-buoy’s slow tolling; and up from the village rose the music of
the smitten anvil. That music minded him of a Hindustani poem Hal
once had read to him—a poem about the blacksmith, Destiny, beating
out showers of sparks upon the cosmic anvil in the night of eternity,
each spark a human soul; and each, swiftly extinguished, worth just as
much to Destiny as earthly anvil sparks are to the human toiler at the
forge—as much and no more.
The poem had thus ended:
“All is Maya, all is illusion! Why struggle, then?
To walk is better than to run; to stand is better than to walk.
To sit is better than to stand; to lie is better than to sit.
To sleep is better than to wake; to dream is better than to live.
Better still is a sleep that is dreamless,
And death is best of all!”
“I wonder if that’s true?” the captain mused. “I wonder if life _is_
all illusion and death alone is real?”
Thus meditating, he felt very near the wife and son who lay there
beneath the flowers he had just laid on the close-cut sod. The
cloud-shadows, drifting over the hilltop, seemed symbols of the
transitory passage of man’s life, unstable, ever drifting on, and
leaving on the universe no greater imprint than shadows on the grass.
He yearned toward those who had gone to rest before him; and though not
a praying man, a supplication voiced itself in him:
“Oh, God, let me finish out my work, and let me rest! Let me put the
boy on the right course through life, and let me know he’ll follow
it—then, let me steer for the calm harbor where Thou, my Pilot, wilt
give me quiet from the storm!”
Thus the old captain sat there for a long time, pondering many and sad
things; and all at once he saw the figure of a man in white coming
along the road. The captain knew him afar.
“There’s Hal now,” said he. “I wonder where he’s been and what this all
means?”
A new anxiety trembled through his wounded heart, that longed for
nothing now but love and trust. Up rose the old captain, and with slow
steps walked to the eastern wall of the cemetery. There he waited
patiently.
Presently Hal came into sight, round the shoulder of Croft Hill.
“Ahoy, there! Hal! Come here—I want to see you!”
The old man’s cry dropped with disagreeable surprise into Hal’s
sinister reflections. Hal looked up, and swore to himself. He sensed
the meaning of that summons.
“There’s another damned scene coming,” thought Hal. “Why the hell can’t
he let me alone now? Why can’t everybody let me alone?”
Nothing could now have been more inopportune than an interview with
his grandfather. Hal—his rage burned out to ashes—had come down from
Geyser Rock, and had turned homeward in evil humor. And as he had gone
he had already begun to lay out tentative plans for what he meant to do.
“It’s all bull, what Laura handed me!” he had been thinking when
the captain’s summons had intruded. “Am I going to let her throw me
that way? I guess _not_! I’ll land her yet; but not here, not here!
I can’t stick here. The way I’m in wrong with the college, and now
this new rough-house with Laura, will certainly put the crimp in me.
What I’ve got to do is clear out. And I won’t go alone, at that. If I
only had a twenty-five footer! I could get her aboard of it some way.
The main thing’s a boat. The rest is easy. I could let them whistle,
all of them. The open sea—that’s the thing! That’s a man’s way to do
things—not go sniveling ’round here in white flannels all summer,
letting a girl hand it to me that way!
“God, if I could only raise five hundred bucks! I could get Jim
Gordon’s _Kittiwink_ for that, and provision it, too. Make a break
for Cuba, or Honduras; why, damn it, I could go round the world—go
East—get away from all this preaching and rough-house—live like a
man, by God!”
The captain’s hail shattered Hal’s dreams.
“Devil take the old man!” snarled Hal to himself as he scowled up at
the figure on the hilltop. “What’s he want _now_? And devil take all
women! They’re like dogs. Beat a dog and a woman, and you can’t go
wrong. I’ll play this game to win yet, and make good! Hello, up there?”
he shouted in reply to the captain. “What d’you want of me?”
“I want to talk with you, Hal,” the old man’s voice came echoing down.
“Come here, sir!”
Another moment Hal hesitated. Then, realizing that he could not yet
raise the banner of open rebellion, he turned and lagged toward the
road that led up the south side of the hill.
As he climbed, he put into the background of his brain the plans he had
been formulating, and for the more pressing need of the future began
framing plausible lies.
He lighted a Turkish cigarette as he entered the graveyard, to give
himself a certain nonchalance; and so, smoking this thing which the
old captain particularly abominated, swinging his shoulders, he came
along the graveled walk toward the family burying lot, where once more
Captain Briggs had sat down upon the bench to wait for him.