After a night of blissful rest in his own bed at home, Frank wrote with
absolute good will to Mr. North, delivering over to his ownership the
_Clover_, then in care of a boatman at Long Wharf, in New Haven.
Frank was a happy, contented hero for a whole week, petted and noticed
by whomsoever he was met. At the end of that time he went from this
condition of affairs to be only “the new boy from the country” in
General Russell’s school.
We may not stay to give the history of Frank’s school days, nor of the
trials he there met. At Christmas he was expected home.
Kate subdued and endured her loneliness from day to day, her chief
relief from Frank’s absence being found in writing to him long, loving
letters, in which, very soon, many lines began to be taken up with the
lovely times she was having at her drawing and painting lessons. Kate
began to feel the stir of a growing affection for form and color. She
scarcely understood the feeling; she did not try to understand its
development; but she ran across the marsh bridge with every bit of fresh
achievement, whether of pencil or brush, to show the same to delighted
Mrs. Dobson and critical Harry.
Harry was exceedingly industrious in those days—more so than ever
before. Harry had all the joy of an old miser in his well-stored crops,
and he knew just when and where he could find sale for them.
For a number of days Mr. Hallock had returned from business bearing a
brighter face, and Kate firmly believed that the old, bothersome days of
trouble were passing away. Kate did not mind wearing last year’s dresses
one bit; and as for last winter’s hat and cloak, the only day on which
she sighed for better raiment was the one on which she went to call upon
Frank at the school, and that sigh and wish were altogether on Frank’s
account; but when he whispered to her, as she was leaving, “Kate, I say,
I haven’t seen a girl in New Haven half so good-looking as you are,” she
thought no more of old-fashioned hat or cloak, and would have been
willing to wear even the precious old bonnet safely stored away in a big
yellow bandbox in the garret at the Point—the bonnet that had been worn
by her great-grandmother. Anything Kate would have worn to call forth
such a remark from Frank.
The evening of the day on which the first snow fell that year, Kate
drove Neptune to the station to meet her father, and her brightest smile
faded before his sad, careworn face. She knew at a glance that some new
thing to worry him had happened; so, on the bit of journey home, she
tried her utmost to tell him of every cheery crumb of news that she
could think of, and appeared not to notice any unusual thing about his
manner.
That night Frank’s school-bill came. Mr. Hallock, forgetful of Kate’s
presence, looked at it and laid it down with a long sigh.
“May I see, papa?” was the first intimation he received that she had
heard.
“Yes, Kate; and you may pay it, if you like,” he replied, with a
cheerless attempt at a smile.
Kate looked at it.
“What a lot of money!” she said. Presently, after a minute’s thought,
she asked: “Papa, have you got the money to pay this?”
“No, my child. At present I have not.”
“Would Neptune do it?”
“Neptune?”
“Why, yes. Don’t you remember asking me one day if I would sell him? and
I will, papa, if it is to somebody who will treat him kindly and love
him.”
“Kate, my dear, perhaps I may be compelled to take your offer; but we
will see about it; and if I do, you shall have the finest pony—”
“O, papa! don’t,” cried Kate. “I don’t want any other pony, not as long
as I live; it’s so dreadful to love anything that can be bought and
sold. I will try never to do it again,” and Kate made excuse to leave
the room, fearing that she should spoil her offer by crying. Kate had
been a long time in coming to the point of being willing to give Neptune
up; but now that she had made the sacrifice in so many words, she was
resolved not to cry about it—not if she could help it; but feeling very
greatly the need of more sympathy than Neptune could give, and not
wishing to make known her grief to her mother, she carried her little
moan over to Mrs. Dobson; and finding her all alone in the house, Kate
had a good cry, and felt better by the time Harry came in; so much
better, indeed, that she looked up, smiling at him, and said: “Neptune
is going some day before long. I’ve told papa he might sell him; and
please, I don’t want anybody to say they are sorry for me, ’cause it
isn’t myself that I’m sorry for, but Neptune”; and Kate bit her lip to
keep it from quivering into another spasm of crying.
“Who is going to buy Neptune?”
The question came from Harry, who somehow did not seem to feel half as
much sympathy for Kate as that young girl thought he ought to feel; and
a bit of indignation, more at him than at the talked-of sale, escaped
her lips in the words,
“O, anybody who wants him!”
“Why, Kittie, my Clover, didn’t you tell me not ten minutes ago that
Neptune was to be sold only to somebody who would be ever so kind to
him?” questioned Mrs. Dobson, with a bit of self-assertion quite unusual
in her manner, if not in her words.
“Anybody could promise, but I should not be there to see the kindness or
the cruelty. O, I wonder what makes God let men be so cruel! I pray and
pray, every time I see a horse whipped and jerked, and made to carry too
big a load, that some awful thing may happen to the men who do it! O, I
wouldn’t touch a cent of money, not if I starved, that was made out of
the horse-railroads in New York—such dreadful, dreadful loads as the
poor things are made to carry, and everything! I don’t think it is a bit
worse—”
But Kate did not finish; she was ready to cry. Harry, foreseeing what
would happen, took a letter from his pocket and held it up before her
face, saying:
“Just see! What news!—from Michigan, too—from one of the Huxtables!”
And Harry opened it and began to read, but the heart of the letter he
kept to himself, not feeling able to have anyone bear it with him.
On the night when Frank was out in the fog, Harry, waiting in his room
for the approach of low tide, wrote the first letter he had sent back to
his old home since he had found a new one, and this was the response,
and this was the portion of the letter he had kept to himself: “Last
summer there was a real nice man—ever so rich, folks say, whose name was
Mr. Ludlow, from Maine, out here looking for you. He went everywhere,
where anybody about here told him you might have gone; and then when he
couldn’t find you anywhere, he put it in the papers, asking where you
were. We kept one awhile, but I can’t find it now; but he told me he was
your Uncle Horace; and you must find him out, mother says, right off;
and there’s some land out here that belongs to you, that Mr. Ludlow
found out about, and he’s taking care of it till you’re found.”
Now Harry had had a whole mile of a walk in which to sober down, after
hearing this great, good news for himself; and he very quickly foresaw
what might come of it, not only to himself, but to his best friends, and
he resolved to keep it all to himself until he could find out the best
thing to do; and it was the effect of this letter that Kate Hallock
felt, although she knew not of it.
“I’m ever so glad you’ve heard from your friends, Harry,” said Kate,
preparing to go home; “and, for my part, I don’t see why that queer
uncle of yours up or down in Maine isn’t looking you up.”
Harry’s face grew very red—and Harry wasn’t given to blushing. Had he
stood where Kate’s quick eyes had read more of the letter than he did?
But no; he had stood with the last of the sunlight coming through the
window on his letter and Kate was where it was impossible to overlook
it. Surely Kate had a very curious manner of feeling things that she
could not see. He opened the door for her departure, and, closing it
after himself, he said:
“Let me go across with you, Kittie. When the snow and ice come, we can’t
slip over the near way any more.”
Over the stone wall they went, down the slope and through the meadow,
and they had even emerged from the bit of woods before Harry found
courage to ask:
“When you know of anybody who wants to buy Neptune, Kittie, will you
come right away and tell me, because I know of a person who would like
to own him?”
“Who is it? Anybody in this town?” quickly questioned Kate.
“There is a reason why I can’t tell you who it is; but if the time
comes, you remember—”
“I will, Harry,” promised Kate; and on the Point side of the marsh they
parted.
Before Christmas the snow came down for three days in succession. It
became doubtful whether or not sufficient laurel, pine and hemlock could
be unsnowed from the forests and river hills to afford the usual
Christmas furnishings for the churches. The marsh bridge was buried deep
from sight, and one vast gleam of white extended from the house on the
Point to the house in the Lane, broken only by the bit of forest that
lay between, whilst a round of snow showed where the stone fences lay.
The ice began to grow in the harbor and stretch downward and outward
into the bay. Every morning more and more of the Sound was frozen over.
It was a cold, cold time, the coldest that had been known in many years.
Harry Cornwall was compelled to assist Josh in bringing in the wood, for
that industrious dog could not fetch it fast enough to supply the fires
it became necessary to build to keep everything from freezing up.
The Lane, from Mrs. Dobson’s, seaward, had not been broken, when, a few
days before the twenty-fifth of December, Neptune appeared, shaking his
merrybells adown the snowclad way. Not a dozen sleighs had been before
him since the snow fell. It was Kate and her mother whom he was taking
to pay Mrs. Dobson a little visit.
“Mamma, what if it shouldn’t be?” ejaculated Kate, as they reached the
house, adding immediately, “I wonder that Harry didn’t hear us coming,”
for Harry did not appear.
“Now, Kate,” added Mrs. Hallock, “I warn you once more not to say
anything to spoil it all.”
“You may trust me, mamma,” returned Kate, tossing the blanket over
Neptune and carefully adjusting it; “only I do so want it to be really
and awfully true.”
To be very brief, the apparent object of this visit was to invite Mrs.
Dobson and Harry to spend Christmas at the Point; the real object was to
ask certain questions regarding the young captain who went to sea so
many years ago. Not that he had been heard from, but there had appeared
a man, unearthed as it were from an asylum for the insane, in a distant
state, about whom a number of persons had become curious to learn more.
After thirty years of insanity he had begun to show signs of a restored
intellect and claimed to be—well, no less a person than _the_ Captain
Dobson who was master of the _Snow_.
The story he told was singularly deficient in dates and details, but he
was steadfast in his adherence to the statement concerning his native
state and town, and remembered nothing between his life under a torrid
sun on an uninhabited island, whither he drifted from his sinking ship,
and his present state and condition.
The state in question claimed from Connecticut the money due for the
support of one of her insane citizens for thirty years, and
investigation in this matter led to Mr. Hallock’s learning the
before-unheard-of circumstances.
Not a word of all this must reach Mrs. Dobson, although the old town was
alive and bubbling over with excitement on the subject.
Mrs. Hallock had undertaken the mission to ask Mrs. Dobson certain
questions, but as the moment drew close, she would gladly have
relinquished the task.
“Be real brave, mamma!” whispered Kate, the second before the door was
opened to admit them.
There was Mrs. Dobson, in the sweetest of moods, and snowiest of caps,
making mince pies.
“I’m so glad you’ve come, ’cause I know Harry don’t know how to go to
your house to-day, and I just wanted to know if you would not come to
the old house and take Christmas dinner with me this year, you and
Frank, and his friends, if they come.”
Before Mrs. Hallock had time to thank her, or decline her invitation,
she went on to say, “This year has been an amazing good year. I never
felt so prosperous and as if I wanted _to keep Thanksgiving all the
time_ as I do now, and I believe I’ve fairly done with the foolishness
of looking out on every feast day for the Captain. How he must pity me,
if he is permitted to look down and know how I’ve watched for him!”
“Why, grandma,” said Kate, rocking the blue chair in which she sat until
she made the floor creak, “what kind of a man was it that you looked for
when you did look? He must be very brown, and dried, and kind of grizzly
by this time, living nobody knows where, mustn’t he?”
Mrs. Dobson had taken her hands from the work she was doing and sat down
to talk to her guests. In reply to Kate’s question, she said: “Kittie,
I’m only waiting for you to get to be the great artist I know you’re
going to be, to get you to paint his picture for me.”
“O, I will!” exclaimed Kate. “But what will there be about him that
isn’t a bit like other men?”
“There will be two crowns upon the top of his head, the hair of one must
be black and the hair of the other must be red,” replied Mrs. Dobson,
“only I don’t see exactly how you can make that show in a portrait.”
Kate suddenly ceased to work, bit her lip and tried to avoid looking at
her mother.
“I think we can manage it somehow,” said Kate. “Perhaps we could paint
him saying his prayers on occasion of your marriage in the church.”
“We were not married in church; we were married at home, and everybody
stood straight up and Captain Dobson was the tallest man in the room,”
said Mrs. Dobson.
“Did they wear gloves then?” asked Mrs. Hallock.
“Yes,” returned Mrs. Dobson, “but Captain Dobson never liked to wear
gloves, because one little finger was gone, and he said it made him feel
as though he didn’t know what to do with that glove finger a-hanging.”
It did not take a half dozen questions more—not one of which seemed to
arouse Mrs. Dobson’s curiosity—to learn all that was desired. The
description of the man corresponded with the statement Mrs. Dobson made,
save that the black crown had come to be white.
“Mrs. Dobson,” said Mrs. Hallock, “our errand here was to ask you to
take Christmas dinner with us; but this year, since you have been so
kind, we will come to you, only you must let me send down an assistant
with a few articles that I am sure you will need, to accommodate so
large a party.”
They left in haste. Neptune thought his little mistress must be very
cross—she snatched the blanket so from his back; and he had been doing
his best to stand as still as he could! Straightway to a farmhouse lying
four miles from the village they went. It was here that Isaac Dobson,
only and younger brother of Captain Dobson, lived; and to him they
delivered the photograph and the description that had been sent,
together with the story of their late visit to Mrs. Dobson.
“It does seem, if true, a little more like a return from the dead, than
anything I ever heard tell of,” said Mr. Isaac Dobson, who looked and
appeared like a man who was walking in a fog. “To think that I may see
my brother face to face again! Why, I was a little mite of a chap the
day he went away, and there was such a crowd on the dock that I was
lifted up to see the ship sail.”
“Be sure, Mr. Dobson, that you get him home by Christmas,” cried back
Kate, after they had started for home.
“You may trust me to do my best,” he said, and immediately made
preparations to go for his long-lost brother.
After the evidence given, it is quite needless to assure the reader that
this man was, indeed, the Captain Dobson of this story.
The happenings of Christmas day came in the following manner:
Very early in the morning, long before day-dawn, Mrs. Dobson, on
hospitable thoughts intent, was up and doing.
As soon as it was light, Harry, looking across at the Point, saw the
signal flying from the tower room that he knew was placed for him.
“Something’s the matter over at the Point; I’m wanted,” he said to Mrs.
Dobson. “But I’ll not be gone an instant more than I can help, and you
needn’t save any breakfast for me; I’ll keep my appetite for the coming
dinner.”
It was Kate who had signalled for Harry, on learning the night before
that in the morning a stranger would come to look at Neptune. Very early
she was on the outlook for Harry. Frank had arrived late the evening
before, and in his uniform looked in some way unusually brave and fine
beside Harry in his much-worn suit, that Kate had again and again
reminded him was getting a little too old for dress-up wear; but Harry
had only smiled an answer and kept on wearing it. Kate would not have
said one word had she not been perfectly certain that Harry was able to
afford a new outfit.
“Kittie tells me,” said Harry to Mr. Hallock, whom he sought out, “that
Neptune is to be sold, and I have found a buyer for you.”
“Who is it?” asked Mr. Hallock, looking keenly at the flushed lad.
“I’m not to tell,” returned Harry, “but you can trust me—can’t you?—that
it is someone who will be very kind to the little horse. I hear that
your price is two hundred dollars, and I am authorized to pay the sum to
you.”
“Somebody trusts you, my boy,” remarked Mr. Hallock, “and so will I.”
“Thank you, sir. Will to-morrow do for the money?”
“All right, Harry. You shall have Neptune, though it goes very hard for
Kate to part with him—very.”
“Not half so hard, papa, just now,” chimed in Kate, who had been
lingering about in great excitement, “when it’s Christmas and Captain
Dobson—”
“Kate!”
Kate thrust both her hands over her mouth.
“Papa, I think he ought to know,” she added immediately, removing them.
“Tell him, then.”
And Kate poured out the story in a manner as refreshing as a summer
shower, ending it with the good news that papa had just received a
telegram from Mr. Isaac Dobson that “we will be home on the midday
train.”
“And grandma is going to church!” said Harry. “I’m afraid somebody will
tell her he’s coming.”
“Not a soul will dare to do it,” remarked Mrs. Hallock. “I would carry
the sad news of a death far sooner than this dreadful joy to Mrs.
Dobson. We must just wait for the truth to discover itself.”
Grandma Dobson went that Christmas morning, for Kate had the bliss of
driving her to the church.
During the service, Mrs. Dobson was pitifully disturbed. Why was it that
everybody seemed to regard her with unusual notice? Was it because her
bonnet was “on one side”? No, that was not it; and she passed her hands
softly over the clustering curls—they were all in place; and who was it,
she wondered, for whose safe return from a long absence thanks were
given. Who could it be? She hadn’t heard of anybody’s return. She would
ask when service was over; but she did not ask, for everybody put the
thought of asking far away from her mind. She never knew her townfolks
so polite and kind before. Everybody seemed so glad to stop and shake
hands and wish her a “Happy Christmas!” Some way she told Kate, who
rushed her home over the snow, that she supposed folks thought she was
getting too old for a merry Christmas any longer; “But, Kittie, my
Clover,” she said, “I am not so very old after all, only fifty-nine; and
this Christmas, with you all at the old brown house, will make me quite
young again. I do hope Harry has remembered to look into the brick oven
after the things I put in.”
“Don’t worry, grandma. Mother was going right over and the cook, and I
just this minute caught sight of Frank hiding behind the corner. Go on,
Nep.!”
Kate was intensely excited. Had Captain Dobson got there already? Was he
in waiting in the house? and, O dear! how would everybody bear it? What
a dreadful thing too much joy was, after all!
Frank advanced to assist Mrs. Dobson. The door opened and Mr. Isaac
Dobson came out.
“I thought,” he said, “you wouldn’t mind having one more at your
Christmas dinner to-day—or three or four, for that matter; so I’ve
brought my family over; but we fetched along a roast turkey and some
other things with us—so don’t worry.”
“I’m very glad to see you, Isaac. I wonder what will happen next. This
is a queer Christmas, I must be allowed to say”; and as she alighted and
glanced backward up the Lane, she saw a dozen or more sleighs
approaching. Where could they be going?
She hastened forward up the narrow walk, and had not arrived at the door
when the foremost sleigh drew up by the side of Neptune, and she
discovered old Dr. Paul, minister of the First church, and close behind
him the rector of St. John’s with his smiling face.
“Is it a funeral?” she questioned; and then the sweet, tired woman felt
a little like crying, or laughing, she did not know which; but Mrs.
Hallock had opened the door and said “Come right in. I want to see you a
minute before anybody else comes”; and so Mrs. Dobson was led right into
the room where Harry was attended so lovingly in the early part of this
story, and Kate slipped in behind her; and so the door was closed and
the story told as only one sweet, loving woman can tell life’s best
story to another woman as sweet and loving.
The words that were said we cannot repeat, nor even express the maze of
emotion which filled the heart of Mrs. Dobson—but she arose equal to
even that occasion, when Mrs. Hallock reminded her that too great a
shock might be disastrous to Captain Dobson, who was like a little child
in some things.
“Let him come in, alone,” she said, “and find me here. To think that God
has answered my prayer, when I’ve been thinking it wicked to keep on
praying so long. Go, Kittie, and let him come in.”
Captain Dobson was in the little bedroom opening from the long kitchen,
and from this room also Mrs. Hallock knocked at the door. Captain Dobson
opened it, and silently that lady and Kate passed into the little room
and through it into the long kitchen, that was half filled with
sympathetic friends.
“How did she bear it?” asked one and another.
“Just as we might expect Mrs. Dobson to bear everything,” Mrs. Hallock
replied.
Then, without a word or warning, in her sweet childish voice, Kate
Hallock began to sing “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” She
began alone, but at the second word everybody in the room added voice to
voice, and at the close the door into the front room was found standing
ajar and Dr. Paul went in. He gravely shook hands with Mrs. Dobson and
the Captain, and, after stating the fact that the first marriage
ceremony at which he officiated in his ministry among them was that of
Captain Dobson and Mrs. Dobson, he said he would now, with the consent
of the parties, renew it. “It is too long for the silver-wedding and too
short for the golden-wedding, and, my friends, we will call this the
Praise God wedding.”
Without in the least intending form or ceremony, Kate Hallock entered
the room and stood beside Grandma Dobson and Harry Cornwall found
himself very near Captain Dobson. The room was very full, as good Dr.
Paul repeated the marriage service over the bride with the silver curls
and the man with the calm, grave, happy face. “Not at all grizzly,” Kate
admitted.
* * * * *
After that, hunger came down on all the multitude, and so great was the
care taken by Mrs. Hallock and Mrs. Isaac Dobson, to say nothing of the
contents of the brick oven, that the minister and the rector and all the
friends who had come down to witness the dread joy, thought not of
Christmas dinner elsewhere that day.
* * * * *
You know already—you must know—that Harry Cornwall had turned his
farm-products into money in order to buy Neptune, that he might have the
happiness of restoring that loved animal to Kate Hallock, and that the
plan was well carried out; and you ought to know that you can never find
in the Connecticut Records that the charge for caring for Captain Dobson
so many years was ever borne by the state; but you cannot know with what
great reluctance we bid Kate and Harry and Frank good-bye.
THE END.
[Illustration: [Endpaper]]
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.