he gets home. I will defend myself to this extent; I've patched and propped
them all summer, after every rain, and tried to provide for the fall
storms; but there's a flaw in the original plan”--
“Thee said that once before,” said Dorothy. “I wish thee wouldn't say it
again.”
“Why not?”
“Because I love those old mill-dams. I've trotted over them ever since I
could walk alone.”
“You shall trot over them still. We will make them as strong as the
everlasting hills. They shall outlast our time, Dorothy.”
“Well, about the rent,” said Dorothy. “I'm afraid it will not take us
through the winter, unless there is something I can do. Mother couldn't
possibly be moved now; and if she could, it will be months before the house
is fit to live in. But we cannot stay here in comfort, unless thy mother
will let me make up in some way. Mother will not need me all the time, and
I know thy mother hires women to spin.”
“She'll let you do all you like if it will make you any happier. But you
don't know how much money is coming to you. Come, let us look over the
figures.”
He lowered the lid of the black mahogany secretary, placed a chair for
Dorothy and opened a great ledger before her, bending down, with one hand
on the back of the chair, the other turning the leaves of the ledger.
Considering the index and the position of the letter B in the alphabet, he
was a long time finding his place. Dorothy looked out of the window over
the tops of the yellowing woods to the gray and turbid river below. Where
the hemlocks darkened the channel of the glen she heard the angry floods
rushing down. The formless rain mists hung low and hid the opposite shore.
“See!” said Evesham, his finger wandering rather vaguely down the page.
“Your father went away on the 3d of May. The first month's rent came due on
the 3d of June. That was the day I opened the gate and let the water down
on you, Dorothy. I'm responsible for everything, you see,--even for the old
ewe that was drowned.”
His words came in a dream as he bent over her, resting his unsteady hand
heavily on the ledger.
Dorothy laid her cheek on the date that she could not see and burst into
tears.
“Don't,--please don't!” he said, straightening himself and locking his
hands behind him. “I am human, Dorothy.”
The weeks of Rachel's sickness that followed were perhaps the best
discipline Evesham's life had ever known. He held the perfect flower of his
bliss unclosing in his hand; yet he might barely permit himself to breathe
its fragrance. His mother had been a strong and prosperous woman; there had
been little he had ever been able to do for her. It was well for him to
feel the weight of helpless infirmity in his arms as he lifted Dorothy's
mother from side to side of her bed, while Dorothy's hands smoothed the
coverings. It was well for him to see the patient endurance of suffering,
such as his youth and strength defied. It was bliss to wait on Dorothy
and follow her with little watchful homages, received with a shy wonder
which was delicious to him; for Dorothy's nineteen years had been too full
of service to others to leave much room for dreams of a kingdom of her
own. Her silent presence in her mother's sick-room awed him. Her gentle,
decisive voice and ways, her composure and unshaken endurance through
nights of watching and days of anxious confinement and toil, gave him a new
reverence for the powers and mysteries of her unfathomable womanhood.
The time of Friend Barton's return drew near. It must be confessed that
Dorothy welcomed it with something of dread, and that Evesham did not
welcome it at all. On the contrary, the thought of it roused all his latent
obstinacy and aggressiveness. The first day or two after the momentous
arrival wore a good deal upon every member of the family, except Margaret
Evesham, who was provided with a philosophy of her own, that amounted
almost to a gentle obtuseness and made her a comfortable non-conductor,
preventing more electric souls from shocking each other.
On the morning of the fourth day, Dorothy came out of her mother's room
with a tray of empty dishes in her hands. She saw Evesham at the stair-head
and hovered about in the shadowy part of the hall till he should go down.
“Dorothy,” he said, “I'm waiting for you.” He took the tray from her and
rested it on the banisters. “Your father and I have talked over all the
business. He's got the impression that I'm one of the most generous fellows
in the world. I intend to leave him in that delusion for the present. Now
may I speak to him about something else, Dorothy? Have I not waited long
enough for my heart's desire?”
“Take care,” said Dorothy softly,--“thee'll upset the tea-cups.”
“Confound the tea-cups!” He stooped to place the irrelevant tray on the
floor, but now Dorothy was halfway down the staircase. He caught her on the
landing, and taking both her hands drew her down on the step beside him.
“Dorothy, this is the second time you've taken advantage of my trusting
nature. This time you shall be punished. You needn't try to hide your face,
you little traitor. There's no repentance in you!”
“If I'm to be punished there's no need of repentance.”
“Oh, is that your Quaker doctrine? Dorothy, do you know, I've never heard
you speak my name, except once, and then you were angry with me.”
“When was that?”
“The night I caught you at the gate. You said, 'I had rather have one of
those dumb brutes for company than thee, Walter Evesham.' You said it in
the fiercest little voice. Even the 'thee' sounded as if you hated me.”
“I did,” said Dorothy promptly. “I had reason to.”
“Do you hate me now, Dorothy?”
“Not so much as I did then.”
“What an implacable little Quaker you are.”
“A tyrant is always hated,” said Dorothy, trying to release her hands.
“If you will look in my eyes, Dorothy, and call me by my name, just once,
I'll let 'thee' go.”
“Walter Evesham,” said Dorothy, with great firmness and decision.
“No, that won't do! You must look at me, and say it softly, in a little
sentence, Dorothy.”
“Will thee please let me go, Walter?”
Walter Evesham was a man of his word, but as Dorothy sped away, he looked
as if he wished that he was not.
The next evening Friend Barton sat by his wife's easy-chair drawn into the
circle of firelight, with his elbows on his knees and his head between his
hands.
The worn spot on the top of his head had widened considerably during the
summer, but Rachel looked stronger and brighter than she had done for many
a day. There was even a little flush on her cheek, but this might have come
from the excitement of a long talk with her husband.
“I'm sorry thee takes it so hard, Thomas. I was afraid thee would. But the
way didn't seem to open for me to do much. I can see now that Dorothy's
inclinations have been turning this way for some time; though it's not
likely she would own it, poor child; and Walter Evesham's not one who is
easily gainsaid. If thee could only feel differently about it, I can't say
but that it would make me very happy to see Dorothy's heart satisfied.
Can't thee bring thyself into unity with it, father? He's a nice young man.
They're nice folks. Thee can't complain of the blood. Margaret Evesham
tells me a cousin of hers married one of the Lawrences, so we are kind of
kin after all.”
“I don't complain of the blood; they're well enough placed, as far as the
world is concerned. But their ways are not our ways, Rachel; their faith is
not our faith.”
“Well, I can't see such a very great difference, come to live among
them. 'By their fruits ye shall know them.' To comfort the widow and the
fatherless, and keep ourselves unspotted from the world;--thee's always
preached that, father. I really can't see any more worldliness here than
among many households with us; and I'm sure if we haven't been the widow
and the fatherless this summer, we've been next to it.”
Friend Barton raised his head: “Rachel,” he said, “look at that!” He
pointed upward to an ancient sword with belt and trappings which gleamed on
the paneled chimney-piece, crossed by an old queen's-arm. Evesham had given
up his large, sunny room to Dorothy's mother, but he had not removed all
his lares and penates.
“Yes, dear; that's his grandfather's sword--Colonel Evesham, who was killed
at Saratoga.”
“Why does he hang up that thing of abomination for a light and a guide to
his footsteps, if his way be not far from ours?”
“Why, father! Colonel Evesham was a good man. I dare say he fought for the
same reason that thee preaches, because he felt it to be his duty.”
“I find no fault with him, Rachel. Doubtless he followed his light, as thee
says, but he followed it in better ways too. He cleared land and built a
homestead and a meeting-house. Why doesn't his grandson hang up his old
broadaxe and plowshare and worship them, if he must have idols, instead of
that symbol of strife and bloodshed. Does thee want our Dorothy's children
to grow up under the shadow of the sword?”
There was a stern light of prophecy in the old man's eyes.
“May be Walter Evesham would take it down,” said Rachel simply, leaning
back and closing her eyes. “I never was much of a hand to argue, even if
I had the strength for it; but it would hurt me a good deal--I must say
it--if thee should deny Dorothy in this matter, Thomas. It's a very serious
thing for old folks to try to turn young hearts the way they think they
ought to go. I remember now,--I was thinking about it last night, and it
all came back as fresh--I don't know that I ever told thee about that young
Friend who visited me before I heard thee preach at Stony Valley? Well,
father, he was wonderful pleased with him, but I didn't feel any drawing
that way. He urged me a good deal, more than was pleasant for either of us.
He wasn't at all reconciled to thee, Thomas, if thee remembers.”
“I remember,” said Thomas Barton. “It was an anxious time.”
“Well, dear, if father _had_ insisted and had sent thee away, I can't say
but life would have been a very different thing to me.”
“I thank thee for saying it, Rachel.” Friend Barton's head drooped. “Thee
has suffered much through me; thee's had a hard life, but thee's been well
beloved.”
The flames leaped and flickered in the chimney; they touched the wrinkled
hands whose only beauty was in their deeds; they crossed the room and lit
the pillows where, for three generations, young heads had dreamed and gray
heads had watched and wearied; then they mounted to the chimney and struck
a gleam from the sword.
“Well, father,” said Rachel, “what answer is thee going to give Walter
Evesham?”
“I shall say no more, my dear. Let the young folks have their way. There's
strife and contention enough in the world without my stirring up more. And
it may be I'm resisting the Master's will. I left her in his care; this may
be his way of dealing with her.”
Walter Evesham did not take down his grandfather's sword. Fifty years later
another went up beside it, the sword of a young Evesham who never left the
field of Shiloh; and beneath them both hangs the portrait of the Quaker
grandmother, Dorothy Evesham, at the age of sixty-nine.
The golden ripples, silver now, are hidden under a “round-eared cap;” the
quick flush has faded in her cheek, and fold upon fold of snowy gauze and
creamy silk are crossed over the bosom that once thrilled to the fiddles of
Slocum's barn. She has found the cool grays and the still waters; but on
Dorothy's children rests the “Shadow of the Sword.”
THE STORY OF THE ALCÁZAR.
It was told by Captain John to a boy from the mainland who was spending the
summer on the Island, as they sat together one August evening at sunset, on
a broken bowsprit which had once been a part of the Alcázar.
It was dead low water in Southwest Harbor, a land-locked inlet that nearly
cut the Island in two, and was the gateway through which the fishing-craft
from the village at the harbor head found their way out into the great
Penobscot Bay. There were many days during the stern winter and bleak
spring months when the gate was blocked with ice or veiled in fog, but
nature relented a little toward the Island folk in the fall and sent them
sunny days for their late, scant harvesting, and steady winds for the
mackerel-fishing, to give them a little hope before the winter set in sharp
with the equinoctial. Now, at low tide, the bright gateway shone wide open,
as if to let out the waters that rise and fall ten feet in the inlet.
You could look far out, beyond the lighthouse on Creenlaw's Neck and the
islands that throng the mouth of the harbor, to the red spot of flame the
sunset had kindled below the rack of smoke-gray clouds. The color burned in
a dull gleam upon the water, broken by the dark shapes of shadowy islands;
the sail-boats at anchor in the muddy, glistening flats leaned over
disconsolately on their sides, in despair of ever again feeling the thrill
of the returning waters beneath their keels; and the gray, weather-beaten
houses crowded together on the brink of the cliff above the beach, looking
like a group of hooded old women watching for a belated sail, seemed to
have caught the expression of their inmates' lives. At high tide the hulk
of the Alcázar had been full of water, which was now pouring out through a
hole in the planking of her side in a continuous, murmurous stream, like
the voice of a persistent talker in a silent company. The old ship looked
much too big for her narrow grave at the foot of the green cliff, in which
her anchor was deeply sunk and half overgrown with thistles. Her blunt bow
and the ragged stump of the figure-head rose, dark and high, above the wet
beach where Captain John sat with his absorbed listener. There were rifts
about her rail where the red sunset looked through. Her naked sides, that
for years had been moistened only by the perennial rains and snows, showed
rough and scaly like the armor of some fabled sea-monster. She was tethered
to the cliff by her rusty anchor-chain that swung across the space between,
serving as a clothes-line for the draggled driftweed left by the receding
tide to dry.
“She was a big ship for these parts,” Captain John was saying. “There wan't
one like her ever come into these waters before. Lord! folks come down
from the Neck, and from Green's Landin', and Nor'east Harbor, and I don't
know but they come from the main, to see her when she was fust towed in.
And such work as they made of her name! Some called it one way and some
another. It's a kind of a Cubian name, they say. I expect there ain't
anybody round here that can call it right. However 'twas, old Cap'n Green
took and pried it off her starboard quarter, and somebody got hold of it
and nailed it up over the blacksmith's shop; and there you can see it now.
The old cap'n named her the Stranger when he had her refitted. May be you
could make out the tail of an S on her stern if you could git around there.
That name's been gone these forty year; seem's if she never owned to it,
and it didn't stick to her. She was never called anythin' but the Alcázar,
long as ever I knew her, and I expect I know full's much about her as
anybody round here. 'Twas a-settin' here on this very beach at low water,
just's we be now, that the old man told me fust how he picked her up. It
took a wonderful holt on him, there's no doubt about that. He told it to
me more 'n once before the time come when he was to put the finish on to
it; but in a gen'ral way the cap'n wan't much of a talker, and he was
shy of this partic'lar business, for reasons that I expect nobody knows
much about. But a man most always likes to talk to somebody, no matter
how close-mouthed he may be. 'Twas just about this time o' year, fall
of '27, the year Parson Flavor was ordained, Cap'n Green had gone
a-mack'rel-fishin' with his two boys off Isle au Haut, and they did think
o' cruisin' out into Frenchman's Bay if the weather hel' steady. They was
havin' fair luck, hangin' round the island off and on for a matter of a
week, when it thickened up a little and set in foggy, and for two days
they didn't see the shore. The second evenin' the wind freshened from the
south'ard and east'ard and drove the fog in shore a bit, and the sun, just
before he set, looked like a big yellow ball through the fog and made a
sickly kind of a glimmer over the water. They was a-lyin' at anchor, and
all of a sudden, right to the wind'ard of 'em, this old ship loomed up,
driftin' in with the wind and flood-tide. They couldn't make her out,
and I guess for a minute the old cap'n didn't know but it was the Flyin'
Dutchman; but she hadn't a rag o' sail on her, and as she got nearer they
could see there wan't a man on board. The cap'n didn't like the looks of
her, but he knew she wan't no phantom, and he and one of his boys down with
the punt and went alongside. 'Twan't more 'n a quarter of a mile to her.
They hailed and couldn't git no answer. They knew she was a furriner by her
build, and she must 'a' been a long time at sea by her havin' barnacles
on her nigh as big's a mack'rel kit. Finally, they pulled up to her
fore--chains and clum aboard of her. I never see a ship abandoned at sea,
myself, but I ain't no doubt but what it made 'em feel kind o' shivery when
they looked aft along her decks, and not a soul in sight, and every-thin'
bleached, and gray, and iron-rusted, and the riggin' all slack and white's
though it had been chawed, and nothin' left of her sails but some old
rags flappin' like a last year's scarecrow. They went and looked in the
fo'k'sel: there wan't nothin' there but some chists, men's chists, with a
little old beddin' left in the bunks. They went down the companion-way:
cabin-door unlocked, everything in there as nat'ral's though it had just
been left, only 'twas kind o' mouldy-smellin'. I expect the cap'n give a
kind of a start as he looked around. 'Twan't no old greasy whaler's cabin,
nor no packet-ship neither. There wan't many craft like her on the seas in
them days. She was fixed up inside more like a gentleman's yacht is now.
Merchantmen in them days didn't have their Turkey carpets and their colored
wine-glasses jinglin' in the racks. While they was explorin' round in
there, movin' round kind o' cautious, the door of the cap'n's stateroom
swung open with a creak, just's though somebody was a-shovin' it slow like,
and the ship give a kind of a stir and a rustlin', moanin' sound, as if
she was a-comin' to life. The old man never made no secret but what he was
scairt when he went through her that night. 'Twan't so much what he said as
the way he looked when he told it. I expect he thought he'd seen enough,
about the time that door blew open. He said he knowed 'twas nothin' but a
puff o' wind struck her, and that he'd better be a-gittin' on to his own
craft before he lost her in the fog. So he went back and got under weigh,
and sent a line aboard of the stranger and took her in tow, and all that
night with a good southeast wind they kept a-movin' toward home. The old
man was kind o' res'less and wakeful, walkin' the decks and lookin' over
the stern at the big ship follerin' him like a ghost. The moonlight was a
little dull with fog, but he could see her, plain, a-comin' on before the
wind with her white riggin' and bare poles, and hear the water sousin'
under her bows. He said 'twas in his mind more 'n a dozen times to cut her
adrift. You see he had his misgivin's about her from the fust, though he
never let on what they was; but he hung on to her as a man will, sometimes,
agin feelin's that have more sense in 'em than reason, like as not. He knew
everybody at the Harbor would laugh at him for lettin' go such a prize as
that just for a notion, and it wan't his way, you may be sure; he didn't
need no one to tell him what she was wuth. Anyhow he hung to her, and next
day they beached her at high water, right over there by the old ship-yard.
He took Deacon S'lvine and his brother-in-law, Cap'n Purse--Pierce they
call it nowadays, but in the cap'n's time 'twas Purse. That sounds kind o'
broad and comfortable, like the cap'n's wescoat; but the family's thinnin'
down a good deal lately and gettin' kind o' sharp and lean, and may be
Pierce is more suitable. But 's I was sayin', Cap'n Green took them
two--cheerful, loud-talkin' men they was both of 'em--aboard of her to go
through her, for he hadn't no notion o' goin' into that cap'n's stateroom
alone, even in broad daylight; but 'twan't there the secret of her lay;
there wan't nothin' in there to scare anybody. She was trimmed up, I
tell you, just elegant. Real mahogany, none of your veneerin', but the
real stuff; lace curt'ins to the berth, lace on the pillows, and a satin
coverlid, rumpled up as though the cap'n had just turned out; and there was
his slippers handy--the greatest-lookin' slippers for a man you ever saw.
They wouldn't 'a' been too big for the neatest-footed woman in the Harbor.
But Land! they was just thick with mould, and so was everythin' in the
place, even to an old gittar with the strings most rotted off of it,
and the picters of fur-rin-lookin' women on the walls,--trinin'-lookin'
creeturs most of 'em. They hunted all through his desk, but couldn't find
no log. 'Twas plain enough that whoever'd left that ship had took pains
that she shouldn't tell no tales, and 'twan't long before they found out
the reason.
“When they come to go below,--there was considerable of a crowd on deck by
that time, standin' round while they knocked out the keys and took off the
fore-hatch,--Cap'n Green called on Cap'n Purse and the deacon to go down
with him; but they didn't 'pear to be very anxious, and the old man wan't
goin' to hang back for company with everybody lookin' at him, so he lit a
candle and went down, and the folks crowded round and waited for him. I was
there myself, 's close to him as I be to that fish barrel, when he come up,
his face white 's a sheet and the candle shakin' in his hand, and sot down
on the hatch-combin'.
“'Give me room!' says he, kind o' leanin' back on the crowd. 'Give me air,
can't you? She's full o' dead niggers. She's a slaver.'
“Now, 'twas the talk pretty gen'rally that the cap'n had had a hand in that
business himself in his early days, and that it set uncomfortable on him
afterwards. It never was known how he'd got his money. He didn't have any
to begin with. He was always a kind of a lone bird and dug his way along up
somehow. Nobody knows what was workin' on him while he sot there; he looked
awful sick. It was kind of quiet for a minute, but them that couldn't see
him kep' pushin' for'ards and callin' out: 'What d'you see? What's down
there?' And them close by wanted to know, all talkin' to once, why he
thought she was a slaver, and how long the niggers had been dead. Lord!
what a fuss there was. Everybody askin' the foolishest questions, and
crowdin' and squeezin', and them in front pushin' back away from the
hatchway, as if they expected the dead would rise and walk out o' that
black hole where they'd laid so long. They couldn't get much out o' the old
man, except that there was skel'tons scattered all over the after hold,
and that he knew she was a slaver by the way she was fixed up. '_How_'d he
know?' folks asked amongst themselves; but nobody liked to ask the cap'n.
As for how long them Africans had been dead, they had to find that out for
themselves,--all they ever did find out,--for the cap'n wouldn't talk about
it, and he wouldn't go down in her again. It 'peared's if he was satisfied.
“Wal, it made a terrible stir in the place. As I tell you, they come from
fifty mile around to see her. They had it all in the papers. Some had
one idee and some another about the way she come to be abandoned, all in
good shape and them human bein's in her hold. Some said ship-fever, some
said mutiny; but when they come to look her over and found there wan't a
water-cask aboard of her that hadn't s'runk up and gone to pieces, they
settled down on the notion that she was a Spanish or a Cubian slaver, or
may be a Portagee, got short o' water in the horse-latitudes; cap'n and
crew left her in the boats, and the niggers--Lord! it makes a body sick to
think o' them. That was always my the'ry 'bout her--short o' water; but
some folks wan't satisfied 'thout somethin' more ex-citin'. 'Twan't enough
for 'em to have all them creeturs dyin' down there by inches. They stuck to
it about some blood-stains on the linin' in her hold, but I tell you the
difference between old blood-stains and rust that's may be ten or fifteen
years old's might' hard to tell.