[Illustration: “He gazed at the wooden creature with all his heart in
his eyes.” Page 62.]
ADVENTURES
IN
Shadow-Land.
CONTAINING
Eva’s Adventures in Shadow-Land.
By MARY D. NAUMAN.
AND
The Merman and The Figure-Head.
By CLARA F. GUERNSEY.
TWO VOLUMES IN ONE.
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS._
PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
1874.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.,
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
Lippincott’s Press,
Philadelphia.
THE MERMAN
AND
THE FIGURE-HEAD.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
The Sea-Nymph 7
CHAPTER II.
The Sea Kingdom 28
CHAPTER III.
The Figure-head 52
CHAPTER IV.
The Bewitched Lover 74
CHAPTER V.
The Sea-Nymphs 90
CHAPTER VI.
Lucy Peabody’s Dream 103
THE MERMAN
AND
THE FIGURE-HEAD.
CHAPTER I.
_THE SEA-NYMPH._
“I may be wrong, but I think it a pity
For a movable doll to be made so pretty.”
_Doll Poems._
“I shall call her the Sea-nymph,” said Master Isaac Torrey.
“Umph!” said his clerk, Ichabod Sterns, looking over his spectacles at
his master.
“And why not The Sea-nymph, pray?” demanded Master Torrey. “Why, I say,
should I not call my fine new brig The Sea-nymph if it pleases my
fancy?”
“Fancy!” said Ichabod Sterns, putting his head on one side. “Fancy!
Umph!”
Now this was most exasperating conduct on Ichabod’s part, and as such
Master Torrey felt it.
“Yes, if it pleases my fancy,” he repeated, defiantly. “What right have
you, Ichabod Sterns, to object to that, I should like to know? If I
chose to name her after the whole choir of all the nymphs that ever swam
in the sea—Panope and Melite, Arethusa, Leucothea, Thetis, Cymodoce—what
have you to say against it? Isn’t she to swim the seas and make her
living out of the winds and waves? And what can you object to ‘The
Sea-nymph?’ I’d like to hear. But it’s your nature to object, Ichabod
Sterns. I’ve no doubt that you came objecting into the world, and I’ve
no doubt that when your time comes you’ll object to dying. It would be
just like you.”
“And death will mind my objections no more than you, Master Torrey,”
said the old clerk, smiling rather grimly as Master Torrey ceased his
pacing up and down the room and flung himself into a chair.
“But what _is_ your objection to the name?” asked the merchant, calming
down a little.
“Did I object?” said Ichabod Sterns.
“Didn’t you? You were bristling all over with objections from the toe of
your shoe to the top of your wig.” Ichabod involuntarily put up his hand
to his wig. “Why isn’t it a good name for a ship?”
“Nay, I know naught against it, Master Torrey, only it is a heathenish
kind of name for a ship that is to sail out of our decent Christian town
of Salem.”
“Heathenish! Let me tell you, Master Ichabod, that this world owes a
vast deal to the heathen—more than she does to some Christians I could
name.”
Now this awful speech was enough to make the very pig tails of many of
Master Torrey’s acquaintance stand on end with horror and surprise. But
Ichabod was used to his master’s ways, so he did not jump out of his
chair, but only looked to the door to be sure that no one had overheard
the terrible statement, for had such been the case there is no telling
what might have come to pass.
“How do you make that out, Master Torrey?” he said, composedly.
“Did you ever happen to hear of Socrates or Cicero?”
“Yes, I’ve heard of ’em,” said Ichabod.
“And did you ever hear of the Duke of Alva, or Cardinal Pole, or Bloody
Queen Mary, or Catenat?”
“Yes, I’ve heard of ’em,” returned Ichabod again, a little fiercely.
“And which was the better man, the Athenian or the Christians who burnt
their fellows at the stake?” said Master Torrey, triumphantly, as one
who had made a point.
“Umph!” said Ichabod; “I’m not a scholar like you, Master Torrey, but
I’d like you to tell me whether they were Christians by name that
poisoned Socrates and murdered Cicero?”
“Well, no,” said the merchant.
“Umph!” said Ichabod Sterns again, leaning back on his chair and rubbing
his hands slowly one over the other.
“Well, what of that?” said Master Torrey, a little taken aback.
“Oh, nothing, sir,” said Ichabod; “we have wandered a long way from the
name of the new brig.”
“She shall be The Sea-nymph,” said Master Torrey with decision. “What
could be better?”
“I thought, Master Torrey, you might have liked to call her the Anna
Jane,” said Ichabod, with a little cracked laugh like an amused crow.
Master Torrey colored high, but not with displeasure.
“I wouldn’t venture, Ichabod, I wouldn’t dare. She’s too shy, too
modest, to be pleased with such an open compliment.”
“Umph!” said the clerk again. It seemed to be a way he had. “But you are
determined to call her The Sea-nymph, Master Torrey?”
“Ah, am I!” replied Torrey, who seemed by no means disposed to pursue
the subject of the “inexpressive she,” whoever it might be. “And she
shall have the handsomest figure-head that Job Chippit can carve; and it
sha’n’t be a mere head and shoulders either, it shall be a full-length
figure.”
“It will cost a good penny, master. Job’s prices are high.”
“There’s another objection! Who cares what it costs? Am I a destitute
person? Am I an absolute pauper? Am I like to apply to the selectmen to
be supported by the town?”
“Not yet, master,” said Ichabod, gathering his papers together. “But if
we go to following our _fancies_”—scornful emphasis—“there is no telling
where we may end;” and without giving his master time to reply, Ichabod
sped out of the counting-room.
Now I am not going to tell you a long story about Master Torrey, though
I might do so if I had not a tale to tell you about something
else—namely, this sea-nymph and the merman who figure at the head of
this story. I was once told by a schoolmaster that in writing there was
“nothing so important as a strict adherence to facts;” “fax” he called
them. I treasured up this valuable precept in the inmost recesses of my
mind, and I mean to adhere to facts if I possibly can. But I can’t
adhere to facts till I get them, and to do that I don’t see but I shall
have to tell you a little about Master Isaac Torrey, merchant of Salem,
who was the means of putting this wonderful figure-head in the merman’s
way. He was a merchant of Salem when Salem was a centre of trade, and
sent many a brave ship to the Indies and the Mediterranean. He was
thirty-four years old, and looked ten years younger. He was a man
inclined to extravagance and luxury. He wore the handsomest waistcoats
and the finest lace of any one in town. He had been educated in the
gravest, strictest fashion of those grave days. His parents would have
been horrified if they had found him reading a novel or a play, but they
urged him on to study Virgil and Homer.
Now if you will promise, my young readers, never to tell your respected
instructors, I will let you into a secret. The truth is that the poems
of Virgil and Homer are all full of stories as interesting and charming
as any boy or girl could desire. But this is a circumstance which most
school-teachers make it their first object in life to conceal, and they
generally succeed so well that their pupils for the most part go through
their whole course of education and never discover that their Virgils
and Homers are anything but stupid school-books—a sort of intellectual
catacombs enshrining the dryest bones of grammar and parsing.
Now and then, however, a boy or girl finds out that there is food for
the imagination in classic poetry. Such had been the case with Isaac
Torrey, and the verses that he read with his tutor took such a hold upon
him that he became what some of his friends called “half a heathen.” Not
but that an acquaintance with the classics was thought becoming, nay,
essential, to the character of a gentleman. In the speeches and writings
of those days a due seasoning of allusions to the old gods and a
sprinkling of Latin quotations was considered the proper thing. But this
learning was rather looked upon as solid and ponderous furniture for the
mind—an instrument of mental discipline. Fancy, imagination, amusement,
were ideas much too light and frivolous to be connected with anything so
grave, solid and respectable as the intellectual drill for which alone
Latin and Greek were intended. So when Isaac Torrey talked about the old
gods as if they had been real existences, and spoke of Achilles, Hector
and Andromache as though they had been live creatures, he rather
startled the excellent young divinity student who was his tutor.
Once upon a time his father detecting a smell of burning followed it up
to Isaac’s room, where he found his son in the midst of a cloud of blue
smoke. He asked the cause, and was told that in order to procure fair
weather for the next day’s fishing excursion he (Isaac) had been
sacrificing a paper bull to Jupiter.
Mr. Torrey senior was inexpressibly shocked at the thought that his son
should have been guilty of such a heathenish performance. He gave the
boy a lecture of an hour long, ending with a whipping. He called in the
minister to talk to him. That gentleman, on being informed of the act of
idolatry perpetrated in his parish, only took a prodigious pinch of
snuff and said: “Pooh! pooh! child’s play! child’s play! No use to talk
about it. Let the boy alone.” Mr. Torrey had the highest respect for his
clergyman, and the boy _was_ let alone accordingly, and was deeply
grateful to the Rev. Mr. Bartlett.
Isaac grew up tall and handsome, went to school and to college, and in
spite of numerous prophecies that he would never be good for anything,
neither went into debt nor disgraced himself in any way. In due course
of time he succeeded to his father’s business, and astonished every one
by making money and being successful, in spite of his tasteful dress,
his “wild ways” of talking and a report that he actually wrote poetry.
At the present time he was devoted to Miss Anna Jane Shuttleworth, a
beautiful still image of a girl, who was supposed to have a great fund
of good sense, propriety, prudence and piety, because she liked to sit
still and sew from morning to night, and hardly ever opened her lips.
Ichabod Sterns was the old clerk of Isaac’s father. He and his young
master exasperated each other in many ways, but they were fond of each
other for all that.
From the counting-house on the wharf and the talk with Ichabod Sterns,
Master Torrey went to the workshop of Job Chippit, who in those days was
famous for his skill in the carving of figure-heads.
In these times Job would probably have been a sculptor, have gone to
Rome and been famous in marble and bronze. But the idea of such a thing
had never entered his brain, and he went on from year to year making his
wooden figures without any thought of a higher calling. He was a little
dried, brown old man, with bright eyes slightly near-sighted. Year after
year he carved Indian chiefs, eagles and wooden maidens for the Sally
Anns and Susan Janes that sailed from the New England ports, portraits
of public men, likenesses of William and Mary. He had once made a
full-length figure of Oliver Cromwell for a certain stiff-necked old
merchant of Boston who called his best ship after the great Protector—a
statue which every one thought his finest work. “It was so natural,”
said the good folks of Salem, and really I don’t know that they could
have said anything better even if they had been art critics and had
written for the newspapers.
True it was that all Job’s works had a certain live look to them that
was almost startling sometimes. The Indians clenched their hatchets with
a savageness quite alarming; they looked as though they might open their
wooden lips and whoop. His female figures had life and character. Each
governor, senator or general had his own peculiar expression and style.
Job was an artist, and, what was more, he was a well-paid artist. He
quite appreciated his own genius, and got almost any prices he liked to
ask for his signs and figure-heads. Job was the fashion, and no ship of
any pretension sailed from a harbor along the coast but carried one of
his masterpieces on the bow.
As Master Torrey entered his shop he was just putting the last touches
of paint on an oaken bust destined to adorn Captain Peabody’s little
schooner, The Flora. “So you have nearly finished The Flora’s
figure-head,” said Master Torrey, whose tastes led him to be a frequent
visitor at Job’s shop.
“And a pretty creature she is,” said Job, suspending his paint-brush
full of the yellow-brown pigment with which he was tinging the rippled
hair of the wooden lady, which was crowned with a garland of flowers
carved with no mean skill.
“And the flowers! Don’t you think they are an improvement? What did
Captain Peabody say to them?”
“He didn’t jest like them at first,” replied Job, continuing his work.
“I didn’t myself, to begin with, for you know the ship is called after
his wife, and nobody ever see old Mis’ Peabody going round with flowers
in her hair; but the captain, sez he, ‘Job, I want to have you make it
somethin’ like what Mis’ Peabody was when she was a young woman, ef you
kin,’ sez he. ‘She was a most uncommon pretty girl when I went
a-courting in Salsbury.’ Well, I was kind of struck with the idee, and
the next day I went to meeting, and I sot and sot, and kind of studied
the old lady’s face all through meetin’-time; and when they stood up to
sing, the choir sang ‘Amsterdam.’ You know it’s a kind of livening sort
of hymn. The old lady, she kind of brightened up, and it seemed as if I
could see the young face sort of coming out behind the old one. Thinks
I, ‘Job Chippit, you’ve got it,’ and when I come home, though it was the
Sabbath day, I couldn’t hardly keep my hands off the tools, and the
minute the sun was down I went at it. Then when you come in the next day
and told me about the Flora them old folks used to think took care of
the flowers and the spring, it seemed to suit so well with my notion of
the old lady when she was young I couldn’t help stickin’ the flowers
onto her head, like a fool as I was, for they wa’n’t in the bargain, and
I sha’n’t get no extry pay for ’em.”
“And what did Captain Peabody say?” asked Master Torrey, whose own
nature found sympathy in that of the artist.
“Oh, he was as tickled as could be when I’d persuaded him about the
flowers. Lucy Peabody, she’s been to see it. She says she expects that’s
the way her mother’ll look when she gets to heaven, and the flowers was
like the crowns we read about in the Revelations. She’s an awful nice
girl, Lucy Peabody. Anna Jane Shuttleworth was with her.”
“And what did _she_ say?” asked Master Torrey, eagerly.
“Oh, nothing. Anna Jane don’t never have much to say for herself. I told
her the wreath was your notion, and she kind of smiled, but she hadn’t a
word to say. But look here, Master Torrey, am I to have the making of
the figure-head for your new ship, and what is it to be?”
“That’s just what I have come to see you about, Job,” said Master
Torrey. “I am going to call her the Sea-nymph, and I want you to make
the most beautiful full-length figure of a sea-nymph to stand on her bow
and look across the water when the brig goes sailing away into the South
Seas.”
“A _sea-nimp_!” said Job; “and what sort of a critter may that be?”
“Did you never hear of them?”
“Never as I know of. There’s more fish in the sea than ever come out of
it. I expect these nimps of yourn are some of the kind that never come
out.”
“You never were more mistaken in your life, Job Chippit. They have been
seen on the surface of the sea over and over again. We know almost all
their names, and how could they have names if they were not real beings?
Answer me that!”
“Oh!” said Job, standing back to take a general survey of his wooden
Flora. “They’re some of them heathen young women your head is always so
full of, Master Torrey?”
“Young women! Why they were goddesses, man, or a sort of goddesses. Was
there not the white-footed Thetis, mother of Achilles? and did she not
come to him with all her attendant nymphs—Melite, and Doris, and
Galatea, and Panope?”
“I’ve hearn tell of _her_,” said Job, touching up the wreath on Flora’s
head; “it’s in Lycidas:
‘The air was calm, and on the level brine
_Slick_ Panope and all her sisters played.’
“Jest so; I kinder like to read that piece. It don’t seem to have so
very much meanin’ to’t, I must say, but I sort of like the sound of it.
Them nimps lived in the sea, or folks thought they did, didn’t they?”
“Yes, Job, as we live on the land. I’m by no means sure that I haven’t
heard and seen Nereides and Oceanides myself when I’ve been out by
moonlight on the bay or round the rocks.”
“I guess they never was any round these parts; it’s too cold for ’em. I
knew an old sailor once that said he’d seen a mermaid, but I suppose you
don’t want me to stick a curly fish’s tail on your figure-head?”
“No, indeed. Make her full length, like the most beautiful woman you
know.”
“Hev’ you any idee how them young women used to dress. Master Torrey?”
asked the wood-carver. “I’d like to go as near the nature of the critter
as I could. I must say the notion takes my fancy. It’ll make kind of a
variety, and it’s a pretty sort of an idee to name a ship after a thing
that has its life out the sea.”
“I thought you’d think so,” said Master Torrey, gratified. “Ichabod
Sterns said it was a heathenish name for a ship that was to sail out of
Salem.”
“Well, you know Ichabod. He hain’t got much notion of anything of that
sort. But now what’s your notion of these ’ere water women? Kinder
cold-blooded critters they must have been, I’m thinking.” There was
something in this last remark which seemed to grate on Master Torrey’s
feelings, whatever they were.
“Why so?” he said, a little shortly.
“Oh, because it’s the natur’ of all the things in the sea. It must have
been but a damp, uncomfortable way to live for warm-blooded folks; but
tell me what they were like, or do you happen to have a picture of one?”
“I’m sorry to say I have not.”
“Did they think they was like folks, or did they live for ever?”
“Some said they were immortal, others that they were only very
long-lived. Plutarch says they lived more than nine thousand years.”
“Creation! What awful old maids they must have been! That’s more than
old Mrs. Skinner, who was eighty-six when she married John Dickenson,
’cause she said she wasn’t going to have ‘Miss’ on her tombstone if she
could help it.”
“But then they always remained young and lovely, never grew old or
changed. They used to say that whoever looked on an unveiled nymph went
mad.”
“Waal, I’d risk that if I could see one. But they was kind of onlucky
sort of critters, then, after all?” asked Job, who seemed to be inwardly
dwelling on some thought which he was keeping out of the talk.
“Yes, to those who approached them rashly, but they were kind to those
who worshiped them with reverence and offered them the gifts they
loved.”
“Waal, they wa’n’t very peculiar in that. The most of women is capable
of being coaxed if you only go to work the right way. I don’t know how
it might have been with gals in the sea, but it ain’t best to be too
dreadful diffident with the land kind always,” returned Job, with a sly
smile. “But about this figure of ourn. I suppose it ought to have some
kind of a light gown on, and hadn’t they—them nimps?—got no emblem, nor
nothing of that sort, like Neptune’s trident? I’m going to make a
Neptune for a ship Peleg Brag’s got. Her name was The Ann Eliza. But the
young woman she was named for, she up and married Jonathan Whitbeck, so
Peleg, he’s gont to call his ship The Neptune now. It’s the only way he
can think of to take it out on Ann Eliza, and I don’t expect that’ll
kill her; but didn’t these _nimps_ have nothing about them to show what
they were?”
“Sometimes seaweeds, or coral and shells. Sometimes they held a silver
vase.”
“Waal, I reckon I’ll take the vase, if it’s agreeable to you, and make
her holding it out, and put some seaweed and shells and sich onto her
head, and let her hair fly loose, as if the wind blew it back. She won’t
want no shoes nor sandals, nor nothing of that sort. What would be the
use to a critter that passes its life swimming round the sea?”
“I see you understand. You’ll make her a beauty, Job?”
“I’ll do my best. You’ll want her to be a light-complected young woman,
I guess.”
“They say the Nereides had green hair, but Virgil says Arethusa’s was
golden, so we may make our nymph’s that color,” said Master Torrey,
turning away to the window.
“Jes’ so; I’ll go right to work. I must get Lucy Peabody to put on a
white gown and come and let me look at her a little. She’ll do it. She’s
a real accommodating girl, is Lucy.”
“But Lucy is not fair.”
“No more she ain’t. Not white as milk, like Anna Jane Shuttleworth, but
she’s a nice, pretty girl, and will be willing to oblige me. I’d never
dare ask such a thing of old Colonel Shuttleworth’s daughter.”
Master Torrey smiled to himself as he thought of the silent, stately
Anna standing as a model in the rude shop.
“But I’ll give the figure a look like Anna Jane, if I can,” pursued Job.
“To my mind, she’s a great deal more like some such thing than she is
like a real flesh-and-blood woman.”
To this Master Torrey made no answer, but smiled at the old man’s folly,
and passed into the street without even asking what would be the price
of the wooden sea-nymph.