THE BEAUX OF WALLENCAMP PERFORM A GRAVE DUTY.
"We have our r'al, good, comfortin' meal at night," Grandma Keeler had
said, and the thought was uppermost in my mind at the close of my first
day's labor in Wallencamp. I had taken a walk to the beach; a strong east
wind had come up, and the surf was rolling in magnificently; a wild
scene, from a wild shore, more awful then, in the gathering gloom. The
long rays of light streaming out of the windows of the Ark guided me back
across the fields. Within, all was warmth and cheer and festive
expectation. Grandma Keeler was in such spirits; a wave of mirthful
inspiration would strike her, she would sink into a chair, the tears
would roll down her cheeks, and she would shake with irrepressible
laughter. It was in one of her serious moments that she said to me:--
"Thar', teacher, I actually believe that I ain't made you acquainted with
my two tea-kettles." They stood side by side on the stove, one very tall
and lean, the other very short and plump. "This 'ere," said Grandma,
pointing to the short one; "is Rachel, and this 'ere," pointing to the
tall one, "is Abigail, and Abigail's a graceful creetur' to be sure,"
Grandma reflected admiringly; "but then Rachel has the most powerful
delivery!"
I was thus enabled to understand the allusions I had already heard to
Rachel's being "dry," or Abigail's being as "full as a tick," or _vice
versa_.
The table was neatly spread with a white cloth; there was an empty bowl
and a spoon at each individual's place. In the centre of the table stood
a pitcher of milk and a bowl of sugar. Grandpa Keeler having asked the
blessing after the approved manner of the morning, there was a general
uprising and moving, bowl in hand, towards the cauldron of hulled corn on
the stove. This was lively, and there was a pleasurable excitement about
skimming the swollen kernels of corn out of the boiling, seething liquid
in which they were immersed. Eaten afterwards with milk and sugar and a
little salt, the compound became possessed of a truly "comforting"
nature.
I stood, for the second time, over the kettle with my eye-glasses
securely adjusted, very earnestly and thoughtfully occupied in wielding
the skimmer, when the door of the Ark suddenly opened and a mischievously
smiling young man appeared on the threshold. He was not a Wallencamper, I
saw at a glance. There was about him an unmistakable air of the great
world. He was fashionably dressed and rather good-looking, with a short
upper lip and a decided tinge of red in his hair. He stood staring at me
with such manifest appreciation of the situation in his laughing eyes,
that I felt a barbarous impulse to throw the skimmer of hot corn at him.
It was as though some flimsy product of an advanced civilization had come
in to sneer at the sacred customs of antiquity.
"I beg your pardon," the intruder began, addressing the Keeler family
with exceeding urbanity of voice and manner; "I fear that I have happened
in rather inopportunely, but I dared not of course transgress our
happy Arcadian laws by knocking at the door."
"Oh, Lordy, yis, yis, and the fewer words the better. You know our ways
by this time, fisherman," exclaimed Grandpa Keeler. "Come in! come in!
Nobody that calls me friend need knock at my door."
"Come in! come in, fisherman! Won't you set, fisherman?" hospitably
chimed in Grandma Keeler.
"Ah, thank you! may I consider your kind invitation deferred, merely,"
said the fisherman, suavely, "and excuse me if I introduce a little
matter of business with the Captain. We carelessly left our oars on the
banks yesterday, Captain Keeler, they were washed off, I have ordered
some more, but can't get them by to-morrow. I hear you have a pair laid
by, I should like to purchase."
"What, is it the old oars ye want?" interrupted Grandpa, "why, Lord a
massy! you know whar' they be, fisherman, alongside that old pile o'
rubbish on hither side o' the barn, and don't talk about purchasin'--take
'em and keep 'em as long as ye want, they ain't no account to me now."
"I am very much obliged to you, Captain," the fisherman said, "I am very
sorry to have interrupted this--a--"
"Why, no interruption, I'm sure," said Grandma Keeler, good-naturedly,
"we've kep' right along eatin'."
"Want a lantern to look for 'em eh?" inquired Grandpa Keeler, for the
fisherman lingered, hesitating, on the threshold.
"This is our teacher, fisherman," said Grandma, in her gentle,
tranquillizing tones, "and this 'ere is one of Emily's fishermen,
teacher, and may the Lord bless ye in yer acquaintance," she added with
simple fervor.
The fisherman saluted me with a bow which reflected great credit on his
former dancing-master. He murmured the polite formula in a low tone, at
the same time shooting another covertly laughing glance at me out of his
eyes. As the door closed behind him, "Ah, that's a sleek devil!" said
Grandpa Keeler, giving me a meaning glance from under his shaggy
eyebrows.
"Wall, thar' now, pa, I wouldn't blaspheme, not if I'd made the
professions you have," said Grandma, with grave reproval.
"A sleek dog," continued Grandpa Keeler; "tongue as smooth as butter, all
'how d' yer do!' and 'how d' yer do!' but I don't trust them fishermen
much, myself, teacher."
"Who are the fishermen?" I inquired.
"They board up to Emily's," said Grandma. "They come from Providence and
around, and they stay here, off and on, a week or two to a time, along
through the winter, some of 'em. They fish pickerel on the river, and
sometimes they're blue-fishin' out in the bay, and quite generally
they're just kitin' round as young men will, I suppose. Sometimes they
have vittles sent to 'em and Emily she cooks for 'em.'"
"Why, they're off on a spree, that's all," said Grandpa Keeler,
comprehensively, giving me another significant glance; "they're off on a
spree, and ye see they think this 'ere is jest a right fur enough out the
way place for 'em. This 'ere red-haired one that was in here this
evenin', Rollin his name is, he's a dreadful rich one, I suppose,
dreadful rich! I've heered all about him. He's an old bachelder, I
reckon, that is, he keeps mighty spruce, but I reckon he's hard on to
thirty. Emily's got a cousin that works for some o' them big folks down
to Providence, and she's heered all about him, this red-haired one, and
how he keeps a big house down thar', and sarvants enough, massy! and half
the time he's hither and yon, and a throwin' out money like water. His
father and mother they're dead, so I've heered, and he used to have
gardeens over him, but he haint kep' no gardeens lately, I reckon," said
Grandpa, with grim facetiousness.
"Why, he's been a waitin' on Weir's daughter, down here--Becky. She goes
to school to you, teacher," the old man added, presently, brightening
with a senile predilection for gossip.
"Becky's a very sensible girl," said Grandma Keeler; "and don't cast no
sheep's eyes, but goes right along and minds her own business. Becky
plays very purty on the music, too."
"Yes. But you know Dave Rollin wouldn't any more think of marrying Becky
Weir than he would of marrying me," cried Mrs. Philander. "Of all the
fishermen that have come down here not one of them ever married in
Wallencamp. He's just trifling, and she thinks he's in real earnest;
anybody can see that. You've only to mention his name to see her flush up
as red as a rose. I tell you this is a strange world," Madeline snapped
out sharply; "and Dave Rollin, I suppose, is one of the gentlemen."
"We ain't no right to say but what he's honest," said Grandma Keeler;
"Becky she's honest herself, and she takes it in other folks. She's more
quiet than some of our girls be, and higher notions, and she's young and
haint never been away nowhere, and no wonder if he waits on her she
should take a kind o' fancy to him."
"You know, ma," continued Madeline, "that Dave Rollin would never take
her home among his folks, never; and if I was Becky's mother I'd shut the
door in his face before I'd ever have him fooling around my house, and
she should never stir out of the house with him, never!"
"I don't suppose there's much use in talking to the girl," said Grandma:
"Emily was in here the other day, and Becky, she happened to come in the
same time, and I didn't see no use in Emily's speaking up in the way she
did; for, says she, 'What do you have that Dave Rollin flirtin' around
you for, Beck? What do you suppose he wants o' you 'cept to amuse himself
a little when he ain't nothin' better to do, and then go off and forgit
he's seen ye!' And Becky didn't say nothin', but she give Emily a
dreadful long, quiet kind of a look out of her eyes."
"She hasn't lost quite all of Weir's temper since she's been seeking
religion," said Madeline, in a strangely light and vivacious tone.
Grandma and Grandpa Keeler, by the way, were good Methodists, but
Madeline was not a "professor."
"Seeking religion, eh?" inquired Grandpa Keeler. "She'd better let Dave
Rollin alone, then," he added.
"Let us hope that we shall all on us be brought to a better state of
mind," concluded Grandma Keeler, with solemn pertinency.
Before the meal was finished and the table cleared away, the latch of the
Ark had been often lifted.
On all occasions, afterwards, there was a marked and cheerful variety in
the nature of the droppers-in at the Ark--the children and all the young
men and maidens making their appearance with a promiscuousness which
precluded the possibility of design--but to-night the Wallencamp mind had
evidently aimed at some great system of conventionality, and had been
eminently successful in evolving a plan.
The callers were young men exclusively--the native youth of Wallencamp.
Their blowzy, well-favored faces, which ever afterward appeared to beam
with good nature, to-night expressed a sense of some grave affliction
heroically to be endured.
Their best clothes, it was obvious, had been purchased by them
"ready-made," and had been designed, originally, for the sons of a less
stalwart community. The young men were especially pinched as to their
expansive chests, the broadcloth coming much too short at this point, and
shrugging up oddly enough at the shoulders, while the phenomenally slick
arrangement of their hair was calculated to produce a depressing effect
on the mind of the observer.
As they came in one by one, in a matter of fact way, and Grandma Keeler
announced hopefully to each in turn--"and this is our teacher!" they
accepted the fact with no more flattering sign than that of a dumb and
helpless resignation to the inevitable. They seated themselves about the
room in punctilious order, assuming positions painfully suggestive of a
conscientious disregard for ease, and seemed to draw some silent support
and sympathy out of their hats, which they caressed with lingering
affection touching to behold.
Grandma beckoned me aside into the pantry which immediately adjoined the
kitchen, and informed me in one of her reverberating whispers, that I
"mustn't mind the boys being slicked up, for they'd sorter dropped in to
make my acquaintance, and, if we wanted the pop-corn, it was in a bag down
under where the almanac hung, to the furtherest corner of the wood-box."
I pondered these mysterious injunctions in silence, and realizing the
fact that the Wallencamp beaux had appeared in a body for the express
purpose of making my acquaintance, I essayed to show my appreciation of
this amiable design by an attempt to engage them in conversation. My
various efforts in this line proved alike futile, and they seemed but to
grow impressed with a deeper sense of misery.
I had a vague intention of going in search of the pop-corn, when, to my
sudden dismay, Grandma Keeler and Madeline, who had been noiselessly
clearing off the table, emerged from a brief consultation in the pantry,
bearing with them a lighted candle, and having given Grandpa Keeler a nod
of unmistakable force and significance, disappeared through the door
which led into that indefinite extension of the Ark beyond.
But Grandpa Keeler remained wilfully indifferent to these broadly
insinuating tactics. He fancied, poor, deluded old man, that here was a
choice opportunity to tell a tale of the seas after a fashion dear to his
own heart, unshackled by the restraints of family surveillance.
A singularly childlike and unapprehensive smile played across his
features. He drew his chair up closer to the stove and began: "Jest
after I was a roundin' Cape Horn the fourth time, I believe,--yis, yis,
le'me see--twenty times I've rounded the Horn,--wall, this ere, I reckon,
was somewhere nigh about the fourth time."
Scarcely had Grandpa arranged the merest preliminaries of his tale when
ominous footsteps were heard returning along the way whither Grandma and
Madeline had so recently departed, and he was interrupted by a strangely
calm though authoritative voice from behind the door; "Pa!"
"Wall, wall, ma! what ye want, ma?" exclaimed Grandpa, turning his head
aside, with a slight shade of annoyance on his face.
No answer immediately forthcoming, that wofully illusory smile returned
again to his features. He moved still nearer to the stove, and was just
at the point of resuming the thread of his narrative when--
"Bijonah Keeler!" came from behind the door in accents still calm,
indeed, but freighted with a significance which words have faint power to
express.
"Yis, yis, ma! I'm a coming, ma!" replied Grandpa, rising hastily and
shuffling toward the door; "I'm a coming, ma! I'm a coming!"
The door opened wide enough to receive him, and then closed upon him in
all his ignominy.
The sound of his voice in irate expostulation, mingled with the steady
flow of those serener tones, grew gradually faint in the distance, and I
was left alone with the sepulchral group of young men.
They arose, still maintaining the weighty aspect of those elected to the
hour, and abruptly opened their lips in song.
There was no repression now; the Ark fairly rang with the sonorous
strains of that wild Jubilate.
They sang:--
"Light in the darkness, sailor,
Day is at hand;
See, o'er the foaming billows,
Fair haven stands."
Their voices rolling in at the chorus with the resistless sweep of the
ocean-waves:--
"Pull for the shore, sailor,
Pull for the shore;
Heed not the rolling waves,
But bend to the oar:"
and with a final "Pull for the shore," that sent that imaginary life-boat
bounding high and dry on the strand at the hands of its impulsive crew.
Then they sat down and wiped the perspiration from their faces, which had
become transfigured with a sudden zest and radiance.
I recovered myself sufficiently to express a bewildered sense of pleasure
and gratitude.
"Do you sing, teacher?" asked Harvey Dole, a round-faced youth with an
irrepressible fund of mirth in his eyes, who had broken in on the former
silence with an unguarded little snicker.
Lovell Barlow, he of the dignified countenance and spade-shaped beard,
had faintly and helplessly echoed that snicker, and now repeated Harvey's
words:--
"Ahem, certainly--Do you sing, teacher? Do you, now? Do you sing, you
know?"
I had some new and seriously awakened doubts on the subject. However, the
degree of attainment not being brought into question, I felt that I could
answer in the affirmative.
The countenances of the group brightened still more perceptibly.
"And do you sing No. 2?" inquired Harvey, eagerly.
I tried to assume, in reply, a tone of equal animation.
"Is it something new? I don't think I've heard of it before."
"Why, it's the Moody and Sankey hymn-book!" exclaimed Harvey, looking
suddenly blank.
I strove to soften the effect of this blow by a lively show of
recognition.
"Oh, yes, I know perfectly now. It's 'Hold the Fort,' 'Ring the Bells of
Heaven,' and all those songs, isn't it?"
"'Hold the Fort' 's in No. 1," said George Olver, a new speaker, with
beautiful, brave, brown eyes, and a soldierly bearing.
He spoke, correcting me, but with the tender consideration which a father
might display toward an unenlightened child.
"There's three numbers," said Harvey Dole, "and you ought to learn to
sing 'em, teacher. We sing 'em all the time, down here."
"You are fond of singing?" I questioned.
Ned Vickery, of lithe figure and straight black hair, a denizen of the
Indian encampment, started up, flushing through his dark skin.
"I lul-love it!" he said.
Ned Vickery sang with the most exquisite smoothness, but stumbled a
little in prosaical conversation.
A silent Norwegian, Lars Thorjon, who had sat gazing at me and smiling,
flushed also at the words, and murmured something rapturous with a
foreign accent.
"Yes, we're rather fond of singing." I heard George Giver's resolute
tones.
Harvey Dole gave a low, expressive whistle.
"I like it, certainly, ahem! _I_ do. _I_ like it, you know," said Lovell
Barlow.
"We have a singin' time generally every night," said Harvey. "Sometimes
Madeline plays for us on her music, and sometimes we go down to Becky's.
Madeline's melodeon is very soft and purty, but George here, he likes the
tone of Beck's organ best, I reckon. Eh, George?"
Harvey winked facetiously at George Olver, who reddened deeply but did
not cast down his eyes.
"If I was you, George," continued the merciless Harvey; "I'd lay for that
Rollin. Gad, I'd set a match to his hair. I'd nettle him!"
"I'd show him his p-p-place!" stammered Ned Vickery, with considerable
warmth.
"_I_ would, certainly," reiterated the automatic Lovell "I'd show him his
place, you know; _I_ would certainly."
The big veins swollen out in George Giver's forehead knitted themselves
there for an instant sternly.
"I don't interfere with no man's business," said he. "So long as he means
honorable, and car'ies out his actions fa'r and squar', I don't begrudge
him his chance nor meddle in his affa'rs."
Our attention was suddenly diverted from this subject, which was
evidently growing to be a painful one to one of the company, by the sound
of a violin played with, singular skill and correctness just outside the
window.
"Glory, there's Lute!" exclaimed Harvey, bounding ecstatically from his
chair.
"Come in, Lute, come in?" he shouted; "and show us what can be got out of
a fiddle!"
"Let him alone," said George Olver, but the group had already vanished
through the door, Lovell following mechanically.
"That's Lute Cradlebow fiddlin' out thar'," George Olver explained to me.
"I don't want 'em to skeer him off, for it ain't every night Lute takes
kindly to his fiddle. There's times he won't touch it for days and days.
Talkin' about Lute's fiddlin'--I suppose it's true--there was some
fellows out from Boston happened to hear him playin' one night, up to
Sandwich te-own, and they offered him a hundred and fifty a month--I
Reckon that's true--to go along with some fiddlin' company thar' to
Boston, and he'd got more if he'd stuck to it, but Lute, he come driftin'
back in the course of a week or two. I don't blame him. He said he was
sick on't.
"I tell you how 'tis, teacher. Folks that lives along this shore are
allus talkin' more'n any other sort of folks about going off, and
complainin' about the hard livin', and cussin' the stingy sile, but
thar's suthin' about it sorter holts to 'em. They allus come a driftin'
back in some shape or other, in the course of a year or two at the
farderest."
The door was thrown wide open and my recreant guests reappeared
half-dragging, half-pushing before them a matchless Adonis in glazed
tarpaulin trousers and a coarse sailor's blouse.
I recognized at once in the perfect physical beauty of the eccentric
fiddler only a reproduction, in a larger form, of that sadly depraved
young cherub who had danced before me in ghostly habiliments on the way
to school. It was the imp's older brother.
"Here's Lute, teacher!" cried Harvey; "he wouldn't come in 'cause he
wasn't slicked up. But I tell him clo's don't make much difference with a
humly dog, anyway. Come along, Lute, and put them blushes in your
pocket to keep yer hands warm in cold weather. Teacher, this is our
champion fiddler, inventor, whale-fisher, cranberry-picker, and
potato-bugger,--Luther Larkin Cradlebow!"
The youth of the tuneful and birdlike name dealt his tormentor a hearty
though affectionate cuff on the ears, and being thus suddenly thrust
forward, he doffed his broad souwester, took the hand I held out to him,
and, stooping down, kissed me, quite in a simple and audible manner, on
the cheek.
It was done with such gentle, serious embarrassment, and Luther Larkin
Cradlebow was so boyish and quaint looking, withal, that I felt not the
slightest inclination to blush, but I heard Harvey's saucy giggle.
"Gad!" said he; "hear the old women talk about Lute's being bashful and
not knowin' how to act with the girls! Now I call them party easy
manners, eh, Lovell? What do you think, Lovell?"
"Ahem, certainly,--" responded Lovell, smiling in vague sympathy with the
laughing group. "_I_ call them so,--certainly,--_I_ do."
Only George Olver turned a sober, reassuring face to the blushing
Cradlebow.
"Give us a tune, Lutie," said he. "Lord, _I'd_ laugh if I could get the
music out o' them strings that you can."
The Cradlebow sat down, drew his bow across the strings with a full,
quivering, premonitory touch, and, straightway, the fiddle began to talk
to him as though they two were friends alone together in the room. How
it played for him,--the fiddle--as though it were morning. How it
shouted, laughed, ran with him in a world of sunshine and tossing
blossoms!
How it hoped for him, swelling out in grander strains, wild with
exultation, tremulous with passion!
How it mourned for him, with dying, sweet despair, until one almost saw
the night fall on the water, and the lone sea-birds flying, and heard the
desolate shrieking of the wind along the shore.
I heard a real sob near me, and looking up saw the tears rolling down
Harvey's rosy cheeks.
It was in the midst of a simple melody,--I think it was the "Sweet
By-and-By"--the player stopped and turned suddenly pale.
"That was a new string, too!" he said; "and only half tight." Then he
blushed violently, seeking to hide the irritation of his tone under a
careless laugh.
"Oh, I don't mind the string," he went on; "that's easy mended, but I
happened to think it's a bad sign, that's all--to break down so in the
middle of a tune."
"Darn the sign!" exclaimed Harvey, "I wanted to hear that played
through."
"You remember Willie Reene?" Luther turned his eyes, still unnaturally
bright with excitement, towards George Olver.
"Ay, I remember," said George Olver. "I was goin' mackerellin' with ye
myself that time, only I wrinched my wrist so."
[Illustration: "Good Night"]
"We was out on deck together," Luther continued. "I was lying down,--it
was a strange, warmish sort of a night--and Willie played. He played a
long time. It was just in the middle of a tune he was playin',
that--snap! the string went in just that way. I never thought anything
about it. I tried to laugh him out of it, and he laughed, but says he,
'It's a bad sign, Lute.' Likely it had nothin' to do with it, but I think
of it sometimes, and then it seems as though I must go to that same place
and look for him again. I never done anything harder than when I left him
there."
"You done the best you could," George Olver answered stoutly, "They said
you dove for him long and long after it wasn't no use."
"No use," Luther repeated, shaking his head sadly and abstractedly; "no
use."
"There's naught in a sign, anyway," George Olver affirmed.
"They don't worry me much, you can depend"--the player looked up at
length with a singularly bright and gentle smile. "But Grannie, she
believes in 'em, truly. She's got a sign in a dream for everything,
Grannie has so I hear lots of it."
Harvey Dole had quite recovered by this time from his tearfully
sentimental mood.
"Now it's strange," he began, with an air of mysterious solemnity; "there
was three nights runnin' that I dreamed I found a thousand-dollar bill to
the right hand corner of my bury drawer, and every mornin' when I woke up
and went to git it--it wa'n't there, so I know the rats must 'a' carried
it off in the night, and a pretty shabby trick to play on a feller,
too--but then you can't blame the poor devils for wantin' a little pin
money.
"Did I ever tell ye how Uncle Randal tried to clear 'em out 'o his barn?
Wall, he traded with Sim Peck up to West Wallen, a peck o' clams for an
old cat o' hisn, that was about the size, Uncle Randal said, of a
yearlin' calf, and he turned her into the barn along o' the rats, and
shut the door, and the next mornin', he went out and there was a few
little pieces of fur flyin' around and devil a--devil a cat! Uncle Randal
said."
"You're the D--d--d--you're it, yourself, Harvey!" stammered Ned Vickery.
"You'd better look out, Ned," Harvey giggled, "we're all a little
nearer'n second cousins down here to Wallencamp. Ned's mother didn't use
to let him go to school much, teacher," Harvey added, turning to me; "it
used to wear him out luggin' home his 'Reward o' merit' cards."
"I n-n-never got any," Ned retorted, blushing desperately through his
dark skin; "n-n-nor you either!"
"I guess that's so, Harvey," said Lovell Barlow, quite gravely; "I rather
think that's so, Harvey--ahem, I guess it is."
When my visitors rose to depart they formed in line, with George Olver
and Luther at the head. George Olver was the spokesman of the group. He
offered me his strong brown hand in hearty corroboration of his words:
"We're a roughish sort of a set down here, teacher, but whenever you want
friends you'll know right whar' to find us; we mean that straight through
and fair an' kindly."
I thanked him, and then Luther gave me his hand, but did not kiss me, in
departing.
Each member of the phalanx gave me his hand in turn, with a hearty "Good
night," and so they passed out. The door closed behind them. I meditated
a space, and when I looked up, there was Lovell Barlow's pale face
peering into the room.
"Ahem--Miss Hungerford!" he murmured, in awful accents: "Miss
Hungerford!"
Could it be some telegram from my home thus mysteriously arrived? The
thought flashed through my mind before reason could act.
"What is it?" I gasped, hastening to meet the informer.
Lovell Barlow handed me a picture; it was a small daguerreotype, in which
the mild and beneficent features of that worthy being himself shone above
his own unmistakable spade-shaped whiskers.
"Would you like it, Miss Hungerford?" said he, still with the same deeply
impressive air; "would you, now, really, Miss Hungerford? would you like
it, now?"
"Why, certainly," I exclaimed, with intense relief; and before I could
fully appreciate the situation, Lovell Barlow cast a cautious glance
about him, leaned his head forward, and whispered hoarsely, "I've got
some more, at home--ahem! I've got six, Miss Hungerford. Mother wants to
keep two and she's promised Aunt Marcia one; but you can have one any
time, Miss Hungerford. Ahem! ahem! _You_ can, you know."
"Thank you," I murmured, while it seemed as though my faculties were
desperately searching for light on a hitherto unsounded sea. "I think
this will do for the present."
Lovell nodded his head with a grave good-night and disappeared.
Meanwhile, Grandma and Grandpa Keeler and Madeline were absorbing this
last impressive scene as they slowly emerged from that unknown quarter of
the Ark whither they had retreated.
Grandpa looked at me with a peculiar twinkle in his eye.
"So Lovell came back to give ye his picter, eh, teacher?" said he.
I returned Grandpa's look with cheerful and unoffended alacrity; but
Grandma interrupted, "Thar', now, pa! Thar', now! We mustn't inquire into
everything we happen to get a little wind on. Ye see, teacher," she
continued, in tones of the broadest gentleness, "we knew they'd be sorter
bashful gettin' acquainted the first night, and so we thought it 'ud be
easier for 'em if we should leave 'em to themselves, and we knew you was
so--we knew you wouldn't care."
As Grandpa resumed his accustomed seat by the fire, an expansive grin
still lingered on his features.
"Ah, he's a queer fellow, that Lovell," said he; "but he's quick to larn,
they say, larns like a book. I'll tell ye what's the trouble with him,
teacher. He's been tied too long to his mother's apron-strings. He don't
know no more about the world than a chicken. He's thirty odd now, I
guess, and I reckon he ain't never been further away from the beach than
Sandwich te-own."
"I don't know as we'd ought to blame him," said Grandma Keeler; "though
to be sure, Lovell's more quiet-natured than some that likes to be
wanderin' off as young folks will, generally; but he was the only one
they had, and Lovell's allus been a good boy. Pa and me, when we go to
meetin', we most allus come across him a carryin' his Sunday School book
under his arm, and may be," concluded Grandma Keeler, "there'll be
a time when we shall more on us wish that thar' wan't nothin' wuss could
be brought against us than being innocent."
We pondered these suggestive words a few moments in silence; then Grandpa
Keeler boldly interposed:--
"That Lute Cradlebow--he's a handsome boy, teacher. Ah, he's a handsome
one. They're a handsome family, them Cradlebows.
"There's the old grannie, Aunt Sibby they call her. Lord, she's got a
head on her like a picter! They're high-bred, too, I reckon. To begin
with, why, Godfrey--Godfrey Cradlebow--that's Lute's father, teacher;
he's college bred, I suppose! He had a rich uncle thar', that took a
shine to him, and kind o' 'dopted him and eddicated him, but Godfrey, he
took a shine to a poor girl thar', dreadfully handsome, she was, but yet
they was both of 'em young, and it didn't suit the old uncle, so he left
him to shift for himself. And Godfrey, he tried one thing and another,
and never held long to nothin', I guess, and finally he drifted down this
way, and here he stuck.
"He's got a good head, Godfrey has, but he wasn't never extry fond o'
work, I reckon, and he's growed dreadful rheumatiky lame, and he has his
sprees, occasionally.
"Liddy, that's his wife, teacher, she was full good enough for him when
ye come to the p'int. Oh, she's a smart wife, and she's had a hard row,
so many children and nothin' to do with, as ye might say. Why, they've
had thirteen children, ain't they, ma?
"Le' me see--four on 'em dead, and three on 'em--no! four on 'em married,
and three on 'em--How is't, ma?"
Grandma then took up the tangled thread of the old Captain's discourse,
with calm disdain, and proceeded to disclose an appalling array of
statistics, not only in regard to the Cradlebow family, but including
generations of men hitherto unknown and remote.
When I signified a desire to retire for the night, Madeline informed me,
with a brisk and hopeful air, that my room was "all ready now."
She led the way up a short and narrow little staircase into a low garret,
where, amid a dark confusion of objects, I was forcibly reminded of the
rows of hard substances suspended from the rafters. Turning to the left,
the rays of the candle revealed a small red door framed in among the
unpainted boards of the wall.
There, Madeline bade me a flippant and musical good night, and I entered
my room, alone.
Within, the contrast between the door and the brown walls was still more
effectively drawn.
The bed, neatly made, stood in a niche where the roof slanted perceptibly
downward, so that the sweetly unconscious sleeper (as I found afterwards)
perchance tossing his head upward, in a dream, was doomed to bring that
member into resounding contact with the ceiling, I judged something of
the restless proclivities of the last occupants of the room by the amount
of plastering of which this particular section had been deprived. In
this, and in other places where it had fallen, it had been collected and
tacked up again to the ceiling in cloth bags which presented a graceful
and drooping, though at first sight, rather enigmatical appearance.
The chimney ran through the room forming a sort of unique centre-piece.
This and more I accepted, wearily, and then sank down by the bed and
cried. Outside, before the one small window, stood a peach tree.
Afterward, when this had grown to be a very dear little room to me, I
looked out cheerfully through its branches, warm with sunshine, and
fragrant with bloom; but now it was bare and ghostly, and, as the wind
blew, one forlorn twig trailed back and forth across the window.
For an hour or more after my head touched the pillow, I lay awake
listening to the unaccustomed sound of the surf and those skeleton
fingers tapping at the pane.