FALLEN FORTUNES.
“A stern chase is a long chase;” so, leaving Captain Thompson in
pursuit of the fugitive, we will take the liberty of passing through
his premises to the main street. At the left of the church, opposite
his house, another road ran down a steep hill, crossed Rogue’s River,
by a bridge, ran up another hill, and wound round into the Foxtown
road. At the top of the second hill stood a small brown house, by no
means attractive in appearance, being destitute of paint, climbing
vine, flowers, or other ornamentation. It had not even the virtue of
neatness to recommend it. The gate was off its hinges, and lay in the
road. A crazy barn close by had a pitch towards the river, as though
from sheer weakness it was inclined to lie down for rest, while the
scanty patch of cabbages and beets, the potato hills, few and far
between, and the rickety bean-poles, all had a starved and neglected
appearance.
This was known as the “Sleeper Place,” being occupied by Mrs. Sleeper
and the young people, Rebecca and Edward, better known as Becky and
Teddy. Inside, the house was not much more attractive than the outside.
On the lower floor were four rooms, separated by the entry, from which
a flight of stairs, hidden by a door, led to the garret above. On one
side was a kitchen, with a door leading into Mrs. Sleeper’s bed-room
at the back. On the other side was a sitting-room, with a door leading
to a bed-room back of that, known as Becky’s room. Teddy’s quarters
were above, under the roof. The house was scantily furnished with
old-fashioned furniture and home-made carpets, all of which had seen
their best many years before, and now showed veteran scars of long
service.
In the kitchen were two females--Mrs. Sleeper and Hulda Prime. Mrs.
Sleeper was a small, slender woman, with a face from which much beauty
had faded out, a face which bore but one expression at all times--that
of anxious expectation. All else had died out five years before. Then
she was a bright, cheerful, active wife, merrily singing over her
household cares. Now she was waiting, for time to determine whether she
was a wife or a widow.
In ’49, when the California gold fever attacked so many New England
towns, Captain Cyrus Sleeper was returning from the West Indies with
a cargo of sugar and molasses, in the new ship “Bounding Billow,”
the joint property of himself and Captain Paul Thompson. Touching
at Havana, he was made acquainted with the startling news of gold
discoveries; and, always impetuous, at once turned the bow of his ship
towards California.
A year passed, and Captain Thompson also received startling news.
His runaway partner had reached California, disposed of his cargo at
fabulous prices, and sent the ship home in charge of his mate, and had
started for the mines. To his partner he remitted the whole amount
received for his cargo,--enough to build two ships like the Bounding
Billow,--one half of which, being his own, was to be held by his
partner for the support of his family until his return.
The captain was astounded. The conduct of his partner was so strange,
he believed he must have lost his reason, and never expected to hear
any intelligence of him again. Mrs. Sleeper also received a message
from her eccentric husband, full of glowing descriptions of quick
fortunes made in El Dorado, hopes of speedy return, and bright pictures
of the high life they would lead when “his ship came in.” Since that
time nothing had been heard of Captain Cyrus Sleeper or his fortunes.
The ship was fitted for a second voyage to the West Indies, Mrs.
Sleeper, by Thompson’s advice, going shares with him in the venture.
But it proved disastrous. The ship was wrecked on her return, and Mrs.
Sleeper found herself obliged to live on a very small income. Of a very
romantic nature, her sailor husband always a hero in her eyes, for
a little while she had high hopes of his quick return with an ample
fortune, and chatted gaily of the good time coming “when her ship came
in.” But as time passed, and no message came from over the sea, the
smile forsook her lips, the brightness her cheek, and the hope-light of
her eyes changed to an eager, searching glance, that told of an unquiet
mind and an aching, breaking heart.
She went about her household duties, cooked, scrubbed, and mended,
quietly and silently, but took no pride in her home, no comfort in her
children. The house soon showed evidences of neglect. The children,
without a mother’s sympathy and guidance, were rapidly running to waste.
Just when the money began to give out, Hulda Prime “came to help.”
Hulda was a distant relative of Cyrus Sleeper, by her own showing, as
she was a distant relative of almost everybody in Cleverly. She was
somewhere between forty and sixty: it was hard telling her age. It
could not be told by her hair, for she had none; nor yet by her teeth,
for they were false, or her cheeks, for they were always bright, and
had a natural color which some people were wicked enough to say was not
natural. She was long-favored, long and lean in body, had a very long
face, long nose, and a long chin. She wore a “front,” with two auburn
ringlets dangling at either end, a very tall white cap, carried herself
very erect, and had altogether a solemn and serious demeanor. She left
a “relative” to come and help “dear Delia in her troubles;” though in
what her help consisted was a puzzle which the good people of Cleverly
had never been able to solve. She got her living by “helping.” She
had no money, but she had a large stock of complaints, so many, that
they might have been calendared thus: Monday, rheumatism; Tuesday,
cancer; Wednesday, dyspepsia; Thursday, heart disease; Friday, lumbago;
Saturday, “spine;” Sunday, neuralgia. Or to vary the monotony, she
would start off Monday with “cancer,” or some other disease; but the
week would contain the whole programme. She was very regular in her
habits--of complaining, and was always taken bad just when she might be
of assistance.
This day she was crouched by the fire, her head tied up in a towel, her
body slowly rocking to and fro. It was her neuralgia day.
Mrs. Sleeper stood at her wash-tub near the window, her hands busy in
the suds, her eyes fixed on the distant waters of the bay, her thoughts
away with the ship that never came in. So absorbed was she in her
“waiting” dream, that she did not see Captain Thompson, who for the
last ten minutes had been puffing up the hill in sight of the window;
was not aware of his approach until he stood in the kitchen doorway,
with both hands braced against the sides, breathing very hard.
“So, so! Pur--pur--purty capers those young ones of yours are cutting
up, Delia Sleeper!”
Mrs. Sleeper turned with a start; Aunt Hulda straightened up with a
groan.
“Do you mean Rebecca and Edward, captain? Have they been making any
trouble?” said Mrs. Sleeper, with the faintest sign of interest in her
voice.
“Trouble, trouble!” shouted the captain, so loud that Aunt Hulda gave a
groan, and held her head very hard; “did they ever make anything else?
Ain’t they the pests of the town? Who or what is safe when they are
about? I tell you what it is, Delia, I’m a patient man, a very patient
man. I’ve endured this sort of thing just as long as I mean to. I tell
you something’s got to be done.” And the captain looked very red, very
angry, and very determined.
“I’m sure I try to keep the children out of mischief,” faltered Mrs.
Sleeper.
“No, you don’t. That’s just what’s the matter. You’ve no control over
them. You don’t want to control them. You just let them loose in the
town, like a couple of wildcats, seeking whom they may devour. What’s
the consequence? Look at Brown’s melon patch! He couldn’t find a sound
melon there. Look at my orchard! Despoiled by those barbarians! Here’s
a sample. To-day I caught them at one of my trees, loaded with plunder;
caught them in the act!”
“O, captain! you did not punish them!”
“Punish eels! No; they were too sharp for me. One ran off with my
horse, and a purty chase I’ve had for nothing. The other marched away
with my fruit. But I will punish them; be sure of that. Now, Delia,
this thing must be stopped; it shall be stopped. I’m a man of my word,
and when I say a thing’s to be done, it is done.”
“I’m sure I’m willing to do anything I can to keep them orderly,” began
Mrs. Sleeper.
“Now what’s the use of your talking so? You know you’re not willing to
do anything of the kind. You’re all bound up in your sorrows. You won’t
think of the matter again when I’m gone--you know you won’t. If you
cared for their bringing up, you’d have that boy at school, instead of
letting him fatten on other folks’s property, and bring that girl up to
work, instead of lettin’ her go galloping all over creation on other
folks’s horses. I tell you, Delia Sleeper, you don’t know how to bring
up young ones!”
The captain, in his warmth, braced himself against the door sills so
energetically that they cracked, and a catastrophe, something like
that which occurred when Samson played with the pillars of the temple,
seemed imminent.
“P’raps she’d better turn ’em over to you, Cap’n Thompson,” growled
Aunt Hulda; “you’re such a grand hand at bringin’ up!”
“Hulda Prime, you jest attend to your own affairs. This is none of your
business; so shet up!” shouted the more plain than polite captain.
“Shut up!” retorted Aunt Hulda. “Wal, I never! Ain’t you gettin’ a
leetle _obstroperlous_, cap’n? This here’s a free country, and nobody’s
to hinder anybody’s freein’ their mind to anybody, even if they are
a little up in the world. Shut up, indeed!” And Aunt Hulda, in her
indignation, rose from her chair, walked round it, and plumped down
again in her old position.
“I don’t want any of your interference, Hulda Prime.”
“I know you don’t. But it’s enough to make a horse laugh to see you
comin’ here tellin’ about bringin’ up young uns! Brought up your Harry
well--didn’t yer?”
“Hush, Aunt Hulda; don’t bring up that matter now,” said Mrs. Sleeper.
“Why not?” said Aunt Hulda, whose neuralgia was working her temper up
to a high pitch. “When folks come to other folks’s houses to tell ’em
how to train up their children, it’s high time they looked to home.”
“I brought up my son to obey his father in everything, and there wasn’t
a better boy in the town.”
“I want to know! He was dreadful nice when you had him under your
thumb, for you was so strict with him he darsn’t say his soul was his
own; but he made up for it when he got loose. Sech capers! He made a
tom-boy of our Becky, and was jest as full of mischief as he could
stick.”
“No matter about my son, Hulda Prime; he’s out of the way now.”
“Yes; cos you wanted to put him to a trade after he’d been through
the academy. He didn’t like that, and started off to get a college
education, and you shut the door agin him, and you locked up your
money, and vowed he should starve afore you’d help him. But they do say
he’s been through Harvard College in spite of yer.”
“Hulda Prime, you’re a meddlin’ old woman,” roared the captain,
thoroughly enraged, “and it’s a pity somebody didn’t start you off
years ago--hangin’ round where you ain’t wanted.”
“I never hung round your house much--did I, cap’n?” cried Aunt Hulda,
with a triumphant grin, which evidently started the neuralgic pains,
for she sank back with a groan.
While this passage of tongues was going on inside the house, Miss Becky
appeared in the road, mounted on Uncle Ned, who looked rather jaded,
as though he had been put to a hard gallop. Flinging herself from his
back she entered the door, when the form of Captain Thompson, braced in
the kitchen door-way,--which position he had not forsaken even in the
height of debate,--met her eyes. Her first thought was to regain the
safe companionship of Uncle Ned; but a desire to know what was going on
overcame her sense of danger, and she gently lifted the latch of the
door which opened to the garret stairs, and stepped inside. The warlike
parties in the kitchen covered her retreat with the clamor of their
tongues.
“Now, Delia, I want you to listen to reason,” continued the captain,
turning from the vanquished spinster to the silent woman, who had kept
busily at work during the combat. “You’re too easy with them children.
They want a strong hand to keep them in line. Now you know I’m a good
friend to you and yours; and though Cyrus Sleeper treated me rather
shabbily--”
“My gracious! hear that man talk!” blurted out Aunt Hulda. “It’s no
such thing, and you know it. You made more money out of his Californy
speculation with that air ship than you ever made afore in your life.”
“Will you be quiet, woman?” roared the captain. “I ain’t talkin’ to
you, and don’t want any of your meddlin’.”
“Aunt Hulda, don’t interrupt, please,” said Mrs. Sleeper; “let’s hear
what the captain has to say.”
“Then let him talk sense. The idea of Cyrus Sleeper’s ever treating
anybody shabby! It’s ridikerlous!” growled Aunt Hulda, as she returned
to her neuralgic nursing.
“The young ones want a strict hand over ’em,” continued the captain,
when quiet was restored again. “I’m willing to take part charge of
them, if you’ll let me. They must be sent to school.”
“I can’t afford it, captain. I couldn’t send ’em last year. You know
the money’s most gone,” said Mrs. Sleeper.
“I know its all gone, Delia. What you’ve been drawing the last year is
from my own pocket. But no matter for that. Drinkwater opens the school
Monday. I’ll send the children there, and pay the bills. It’s time
something was done for their education; and I’ll be a father to them,
as they’re not likely to have another very soon.”
“Don’t say that, don’t say that! Cyrus will come back--I know he will.”
“If he’s alive. But don’t be too hopeful. There’s been a heap of
mortality among the miners; and if he’s alive, we should have heard
from him afore this. Chances are agin him. So you’d better be resigned.
Yes, you’d better give him up, put on mourning for a year, and then
look round, for the money’s gone.”
“Give up my husband!” cried Mrs. Sleeper, with energy. “No, no. He
will come back; I feel, I know he will. He would never desert me; and
if he died,--O, Heaven, no, no!--if he died, he would find some way to
send his last words to me. No, no, don’t say give him up. I cannot, I
cannot!” and the poor woman burst into tears.
“Wal, I never!” cried Aunt Hulda. “Look round, indeed! Why, it’s
bigamy, rank bigamy!”
“Well, well,” said the captain, quickly, anxious to avoid another
battle, “do as you please about that; but let’s give the children a
good bringing up. They’ve got to earn their own living, and the sooner
they get a little learning the better.”
“The children should go to school, captain, I know,” said Mrs. Sleeper;
“but I’m afraid they will not take kindly to the change.”
“I’ll make ’em, then. It’s time they were broke, and I flatter myself
I’m able to bring ’em under control. But make no interference with my
plans. Once begun, they must stick to school. It’s for their good, you
know.”
“Very well, captain; I consent; only be easy with them at first.”
“O, I’ll be easy enough, never fear, if they mind me; if not, they must
take the consequences. So, next Monday fix ’em up, and I’ll take ’em
over, and talk to Drinkwater.”
“I’ll have them all ready, captain, and thank you for the trouble
you’re taking,” said Mrs. Sleeper.
“Now, mind! no interference from you or Hulda. If there is--”
“Don’t fret yourself about me, cap’n. Mercy knows I’ve trouble enough
of my own. I declare, there’s that lumbago comin’ on agin,” groaned
Aunt Hulda.
The captain seemed highly delighted at the prospect of a change in the
condition of his enemy, and, with a triumphant smile, backed into the
entry.
“Hallo! there’s my horse, reeking with sweat. Where is that imp of
mischief?” thundered the exasperated captain. “If I catch her--”
“Here I am, cap’n. Clear the coast! Ha, ha, ha! Hooray!”
The voice came from the garret. There was a thundering racket on the
stairs, a crash against the door, which flew open, and Becky, seated
in an old cradle without rockers, burst into the entry. Tired of
listening, she had searched the garret for sport, had dragged this old
emblem of infancy from its hiding-place to the head of the stairs,
seated herself in it, and, regardless of consequences, started for a
slide.
It was a reckless act. As the door flew open, the cradle struck the
captain’s shins, throwing him backwards, and pitching Becky out of the
front door on to the grass. The captain scrambled to his feet, furious
with pain and choler. Becky regained hers quickly and started for the
barn, the captain in hot pursuit. Another stern chase. The captain soon
desisted, mounted his horse, and rode away, while Miss Becky perched
herself on the rickety fence, and saluted the captain’s ears, as he
rode down the hill, with the refrain of the well-known song, “O, dear,
what can the matter be?”