bestowed by me on the public, I demand neither place, pension, exclusive
privilege, nor any other reward whatever. I expect only to have the
honour of it. And yet I know there are little envious minds who will, as
usual, deny me this, and say that my invention was known to the
ancients, and perhaps they may bring passages out of old books in proof
of it. I will not dispute with these people that the ancients knew not
the sun would rise at certain hours—they possibly had, as we have,
almanacs that predicted it—but it does not follow thence that they knew
_he gave light as soon as he rose_. This is what I claim as my
discovery. If the ancients knew it, it might have been long since
forgotten, for it certainly was unknown to the moderns, at least to the
Parisians, which to prove I need use but one plain, simple argument.
They are as well instructed, judicious, and prudent a people as exist
anywhere in the world, all professing, like myself, to be lovers of
economy; and, from the many heavy taxes required from them by the
necessities of the state, have surely an abundant reason to be
economical. I say it is impossible that so sensible a people, under such
circumstances, should have lived so long by the smoky, unwholesome, and
enormously expensive light of candles, if they had really known that
they might have had as much pure light of the sun for nothing.
_Benjamin Franklin._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_MISS MEHETABEL’S SON._
A MAN with a passion for _bric-à-brac_ is always stumbling over antique
bronzes, intaglios, mosaics, and daggers of the time of Benvenuto
Cellini; the bibliophile finds creamy vellum folios and rare Alduses and
Elzevirs waiting for him at unsuspected bookstalls; the numismatist has
but to stretch forth his palm to have priceless coins drop into it. My
own weakness is odd people, and I am constantly encountering them. It
was plain I had unearthed a couple of very queer specimens at Bayley’s
Four Corners. I saw that a fortnight afforded me too brief an
opportunity to develop the richness of both, and I resolved to devote my
spare time to Mr. Jaffrey alone, instinctively recognising in him an
unfamiliar species.
My professional work in the vicinity of Greenton left my evenings and
occasionally an afternoon unoccupied; these intervals I purposed to
employ in studying and classifying my fellow-boarder. It was necessary,
as a preliminary step, to learn something of his previous history, and
to this end I addressed myself to Mr. Sewell that same night.
“I do not want to seem inquisitive,” I said to the landlord, as he was
fastening up the bar, which, by the way, was the _salle à manger_ and
general sitting-room. “I do not want to seem inquisitive, but your
friend Mr. Jaffrey dropped a remark this morning at breakfast
which—which was not altogether clear to me.”
“About Mehetabel?” asked Mr. Sewell uneasily.
“Yes.”
“Well, I wish he wouldn’t!”
“He was friendly enough in the course of conversation to hint to me that
he had not married the young woman, and seemed to regret it.”
“No, he didn’t marry Mehetabel.”
“May I inquire _why_ he didn’t marry Mehetabel?”
“Never asked her. Might have married the girl forty times. Old Elkin’s
daughter over at K——, she’d have had him quick enough. Seven years off
and on, he kept company with Mehetabel, and then she died.”
“And he never asked her?”
“He shilly-shallied. Perhaps he didn’t think of it. When she was dead
and gone, then Silas was struck all of a heap,—and that’s all about it.”
Obviously Mr. Sewell did not intend to tell me anything more, and
obviously there was more to tell. The topic was plainly disagreeable to
him for some reason or other, and that unknown reason of course piqued
my curiosity.
As I had been absent from dinner and supper that day, I did not meet Mr.
Jaffrey again until the following morning at breakfast. He had recovered
his bird-like manner, and was full of a mysterious assassination that
had just taken place in New York, all the thrilling details of which
were at his fingers’ ends. It was at once comical and sad to see this
harmless old gentleman, with his naïve, benevolent countenance, and his
thin hair flaming up in a semicircle like the foot-lights at a theatre,
revelling in the intricacies of the unmentionable deed.
“You come up to my room to-night,” he cried with horrid glee, “and I’ll
give you my theory of the murder. I’ll make it as clear as day to you
that it was the detective himself who fired the three pistol-shots.”
It was not so much the desire to have this point elucidated as to make a
closer study of Mr. Jaffrey that led me to accept his invitation.
Mr. Jaffrey’s bedroom was in an L of the building, and was in no way
noticeable except for the numerous files of newspapers neatly arranged
against the blank spaces of the walls, and a huge pile of old magazines
which stood in one corner, reaching nearly up to the ceiling, and
threatening each instant to topple over like the Leaning Tower at Pisa.
There were green paper shades at the windows, some faded chintz valances
about the bed, and two or three easy-chairs covered with chintz. On a
black walnut shelf between the windows lay a choice collection of
meerschaum and brierwood pipes.
Filling one of the chocolate-coloured bowls for me, and another for
himself, Mr. Jaffrey began prattling; but not about the murder, which
appeared to have flown out of his mind. In fact, I do not remember that
the topic was even touched upon, either then or afterwards.
“Cosy nest this,” said Mr. Jaffrey, glancing complacently over the
apartment. “What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an
open wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out
of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and
bluebirds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last spring.
In summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit trees
under the window; so I have singing birds all the year round. I take it
very easy here, I can tell you, summer and winter. Not much society.
Tobias is not, perhaps, what one would term a great intellectual force,
but he means well. He’s a realist, believes in coming down to what he
calls ‘the hard pan;’ but his heart is in the right place, and he’s very
kind to me. The wisest thing I ever did in my life was to sell out my
grain business over at K——, thirteen years ago, and settle down at the
Corners. When a man has made a competency, what does he want more?
Besides, at that time an event occurred which destroyed any ambition I
may have had,—Mehetabel died.”
“The lady you were engaged to?”
“N-o, not precisely engaged. I think it was quite understood between us,
though nothing had been said on the subject. Typhoid,” added Mr.
Jaffrey, in a low tone.
For several minutes he smoked in silence, a vague, troubled look playing
over his countenance. Presently this passed away, and he fixed his grey
eyes speculatively upon my face.
“If I had married Mehetabel,” said Mr. Jaffrey, slowly, and then he
hesitated.
I blew a ring of smoke into the air, and, resting my pipe on my knee,
dropped into an attitude of attention.
“If I had married Mehetabel, you know, we should have had—ahem!—a
family.”
“Very likely,” I assented, vastly amused at this unexpected turn.
“A boy!” exclaimed Mr. Jaffrey, explosively.
“By all means, certainly, a son.”
“Great trouble about naming the boy. Mehetabel’s family want him named
Elkanah Elkins, after her grandfather; I want him named Andrew Jackson.
We compromise by christening him Elkanah Elkins Andrew Jackson Jaffrey.
Rather a long name for such a short little fellow,” said Mr. Jaffrey,
musingly.
“Andy isn’t a bad nickname,” I suggested.
“Not at all. We call him Andy in the family. Somewhat fractious at
first,—colic and things. I suppose it is right, or it wouldn’t be so;
but the usefulness of measles, mumps, croup, whooping-cough, scarlatina,
and fits is not visible to the naked eye. I wish Andy would be a model
infant, and dodge the whole lot.”
This supposititious child, born within the last few minutes, was clearly
assuming the proportions of a reality to Mr. Jaffrey. I began to feel a
little uncomfortable. I am, as I have said, a civil engineer, and it is
not strictly in my line to assist at the births of infants, imaginary or
otherwise. I pulled away vigorously at the pipe and said nothing.
“What large blue eyes he has,” resumed Mr. Jaffrey, after a pause; “just
like Hetty’s; and the fair hair, too, like hers. How oddly certain
distinctive features are handed down in families! sometimes a mouth,
sometimes a turn of the eyebrow. Wicked little boys, over at K——, have
now and then derisively advised me to follow my nose. It would be an
interesting thing to do. I should find my nose flying about the world,
turning up unexpectedly here and there, dodging this branch of the
family and reappearing in that, now jumping over one great-grandchild to
fasten itself upon another, and never losing its individuality. Look at
Andy. There’s Elkanah Elkin’s chin to the life. Andy’s chin is probably
older than the Pyramids. Poor little thing,” he cried, with a sudden,
indescribable tenderness, “to lose his mother so early!”
And Mr. Jaffrey’s head sunk upon his breast, and his shoulders slanted
forward, as if he were actually bending over the cradle of the child.
The whole gesture and attitude was so natural that it startled me. The
pipe slipped from my fingers and fell to the floor.
“Hush!” whispered Mr. Jaffrey, with a deprecating motion of his hand.
“Andy’s asleep!”
He rose softly from the chair, and, walking across the room on tiptoe,
drew down the shade at the window through which the moonlight was
streaming. Then he returned to his seat, and remained gazing with
half-closed eyes into the drooping embers.
I refilled my pipe and smoked in profound silence, wondering what would
come next. But nothing came next. Mr. Jaffrey had fallen into so brown a
study, that, a quarter of an hour afterwards, when I wished him
good-night and withdrew, I do not think he noticed my departure. I am
not what is called a man of imagination; it is my habit to exclude most
things not capable of mathematical demonstration; but I am not without a
certain psychological insight, and I think I understood Mr. Jaffrey’s
case.
I could easily understand how a man with an unhealthy, sensitive nature,
overwhelmed by sudden calamity, might take refuge in some forlorn place
like this old tavern, and dream his life away. To such a man—brooding
for ever on what might have been, and dwelling only in the realm of his
fancies—the actual world might indeed become as a dream, and nothing
seem real but his illusions.
I daresay that thirteen years of Bayley’s Four Corners would have its
effect upon me; though instead of conjuring up golden-haired children of
the Madonna, I should probably see gnomes and kobolds and goblins
engaged in hoisting false signals and misplacing switches for midnight
express trains.
“No doubt,” I said to myself that night, as I lay in bed, thinking over
the matter, “this once possible but now impossible child is a great
comfort to the old gentleman,—a greater comfort, perhaps, than a real
son would be. Maybe Andy will vanish with the shades and mists of night,
he’s such an unsubstantial infant; but if he doesn’t, and Mr. Jaffrey
finds pleasure in talking to me about his son, I shall humour the old
fellow. It wouldn’t be a Christian act to knock over his harmless
fancy.”
[Illustration: “MR. JAFFREY WHISPERED TO ME.”]
I was very impatient to see if Mr. Jaffrey’s illusion would stand the
test of daylight. It did. Elkanah Elkins Andrew Jackson Jaffrey was, so
to speak, alive and kicking the next morning. On taking his seat at the
breakfast-table, Mr. Jaffrey whispered to me that Andy had had a
comfortable night.
“Silas!” said Mr. Sewell, sharply, “what are you whispering about?”
Mr. Sewell was in an ill humour; perhaps he was jealous because I had
passed the evening in Mr. Jaffrey’s room; but surely Mr. Sewell could
not expect his boarders to go to bed at eight o’clock every night, as he
did. From time to time during the meal Mr. Sewell regarded me unkindly
out of the corner of his eye, and in helping me to the parsnips he
poniarded them with quite a suggestive air. All this, however, did not
prevent me from repairing to the door of Mr. Jaffrey’s snuggery when
night came.
“Well, Mr. Jaffrey, how’s Andy this evening?”
“Got a tooth!” cried Mr. Jaffrey, vivaciously.
“No!”
“Yes, he has! Just through. Gave the nurse a silver dollar. Standing
reward for first tooth.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to express surprise that an infant a day
old should cut a tooth, when I suddenly recollected that Richard III.
was born with teeth.
Feeling myself to be on unfamiliar ground, I suppressed my criticism. It
was well I did so, for in the next breath I was advised that half a year
had elapsed since the previous evening.
“Andy’s had a hard six months of it,” said Mr. Jaffrey, with the
well-known narrative air of fathers. “We’ve brought him up by hand. His
grandfather, by the way, was brought up by the bottle”—and brought down
by it, too, I added mentally, recalling Mr. Sewell’s account of the old
gentleman’s tragic end.
Mr. Jaffrey then went on to give me a history of Andy’s first six
months, omitting no detail however insignificant or irrelevant. This
history I would in turn inflict upon the reader, if I were only certain
that he is one of those dreadful parents who, under the ægis of
friendship, bore you at a street-corner with that remarkable thing which
Freddy said the other day, and insist on singing to you at an evening
party the Iliad of Tommy’s woes.
But to inflict this _enfantillage_ upon the unmarried reader would be an
act of wanton cruelty. So I pass over that part of Andy’s biography,
and, for the same reason, make no record of the next four or five
interviews I had with Mr. Jaffrey. It will be sufficient to state that
Andy glided from extreme infancy to early youth with astonishing
celerity,—at the rate of one year per night, if I remember correctly;
and—must I confess it?—before the week came to an end, this invisible
hobgoblin of a boy was only little less of a reality to me than to Mr.
Jaffrey.
At first I had lent myself to the old dreamer’s whim with a keen
perception of the humour of the thing; but by-and-by I found I was
talking and thinking of Miss Mehetabel’s son as though he were a
veritable personage. Mr. Jaffrey spoke of the child with such an air of
conviction!—as if Andy were playing among his toys in the next room, or
making mud-pies down in the yard. In these conversations, it should be
observed, the child was never supposed to be present, except on that
single occasion when Mr. Jaffrey leaned over the cradle. After one of
our séances I would lie awake until the small hours, thinking of the
boy, and then fall asleep only to have indigestible dreams about him.
Through the day, and sometimes in the midst of complicated calculations,
I would catch myself wondering what Andy was up to now! There was no
shaking him off; he became an inseparable nightmare to me; and I felt
that if I remained much longer at Bayley’s Four Corners I should turn
into just such another bald-headed, mild-eyed visionary as Silas
Jaffrey.
Then the tavern was a gruesome old shell anyway, full of unaccountable
noises after dark,—rustlings of garments along unfrequented passages,
and stealthy footfalls in unoccupied chambers overhead. I never knew of
an old house without these mysterious noises.
Next to my bedroom was a musty, dismantled apartment, in one corner of
which, leaning against the wainscot, was a crippled mangle, with its
iron crank tilted in the air like the elbow of the late Mr. Clem
Jaffrey. Sometimes,
“In the dead vast and middle of the night,”
I used to hear sounds as if some one were turning that rusty crank on
the sly. This occurred only on particularly cold nights, and I conceived
the uncomfortable idea that it was the thin family ghosts, from the
neglected graveyard in the cornfield, keeping themselves warm by running
each other through the mangle. There was a haunted air about the whole
place that made it easy for me to believe in the existence of a phantasm
like Miss Mehetabel’s son, who, after all, was less unearthly than Mr.
Jaffrey himself, and seemed more properly an inhabitant of this globe
than the toothless ogre who kept the inn, not to mention the silent
witch of Endor that cooked our meals for us over the bar-room fire.
In spite of the scowls and winks bestowed upon me by Mr. Sewell, who let
slip no opportunity to testify his disapprobation of the intimacy, Mr.
Jaffrey and I spent all our evenings together—those long autumnal
evenings, through the length of which he talked about the boy, laying
out his path in life, and hedging the path with roses. He should be sent
to the High School at Portsmouth, and then to college; he should be
educated like a gentleman, Andy.
“When the old man dies,” said Mr. Jaffrey, rubbing his hands gleefully,
as if it were a great joke, “Andy will find that the old man has left
him a pretty plum.”
“What do you think of having Andy enter West Point when he’s old
enough?” said Mr. Jaffrey, on another occasion. “He needn’t necessarily
go into the army when he graduates; he can become a civil engineer.”
This was a stroke of flattery so delicate and indirect, that I could
accept it without immodesty.
There had lately sprung up on the corner of Mr. Jaffrey’s bureau a small
tin house, Gothic in architecture, and pink in colour, with a slit in
the roof, and the word “Bank” painted on one façade. Several times in
the course of an evening Mr. Jaffrey would rise from his chair, without
interrupting the conversation, and gravely drop a nickel through the
scuttle of the bank. It was pleasant to observe the solemnity of his
countenance as he approached the edifice, and the air of triumph with
which he resumed his seat by the fireplace. One night I missed the tin
bank. It had disappeared, deposits and all. Evidently there had been a
defalcation on rather a large scale. I strongly suspected that Mr.
Sewell was at the bottom of it; but my suspicion was not shared by Mr.
Jaffrey, who, remarking my glance at the bureau, became suddenly
depressed. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that I have failed to instil into
Andrew those principles of integrity—which—which——” And the old
gentleman quite broke down.
Andy was now eight or nine years old, and for some time past, if the
truth must be told, had given Mr. Jaffrey no inconsiderable trouble.
What with his impishness and his illnesses, the boy led the pair of us a
lively dance. I shall not soon forget the anxiety of Mr. Jaffrey the
night Andy had the scarlet fever,—an anxiety which so affected me that I
actually returned to the tavern the following afternoon earlier than
usual, dreading to hear the little spectre was dead, and greatly
relieved on meeting Mr. Jaffrey on the door-step with his face wreathed
in smiles. When I spoke to him of Andy, I was made aware that I was
inquiring into a case of scarlet fever that had occurred the year
before!
It was at this time, towards the end of my second week at Greenton, that
I noticed what was probably not a new trait,—Mr. Jaffrey’s curious
sensitiveness to atmospherical changes. He was as sensitive as a
barometer. The approach of a storm sent his mercury down instantly. When
the weather was fair he was hopeful and sunny, and Andy’s prospects were
brilliant. When the weather was overcast and threatening he grew
restless and despondent, and was afraid the boy wasn’t going to turn out
well.
On the Saturday previous to my departure, which had been fixed for
Monday, it had rained heavily all the afternoon, and that night Mr.
Jaffrey was in an unusually excitable and unhappy frame of mind. His
mercury was very low indeed.
“That boy is going to the dogs just as fast as he can go,” said Mr.
Jaffrey, with a woful face. “I can’t do anything with him.”
“He’ll come out all right, Mr. Jaffrey. Boys will be boys. I wouldn’t
give a snap for a lad without animal spirits.”
“But animal spirits,” said Mr. Jaffrey, sententiously, “shouldn’t saw
off the legs of the piano in Tobias’s best parlour. I don’t know what
Tobias will say when he finds it out.”
“What, has Andy sawed off the legs of the old spinet?” I returned,
laughing.
“Worse than that.”
“Played upon it, then?”
“No, sir. He has lied to me!”
“I can’t believe that of Andy.”
“Lied to me, sir,” repeated Mr. Jaffrey, severely. “He pledged me his
word of honour that he would give over his climbing. The way that boy
climbs sends a chill down my spine. This morning, notwithstanding his
solemn promise, he shinned up the lightning-rod attached to the
extension, and sat astride the ridge-pole. I saw him, and he denied it!
When a boy you have caressed and indulged and lavished pocket-money on
lies to you, and _will_ climb, then there’s nothing more to be said.
He’s a lost child.”
“You take too dark a view of it, Mr. Jaffrey. Training and education are
bound to tell in the end, and he has been well brought up.”
“But I didn’t bring him up on a lightning-rod, did I? If he is ever
going to know how to behave, he ought to know now. To-morrow he will be
eleven years old.”
The reflection came to me that if Andy had not been brought up by the
rod, he had certainly been brought up by the lightning. He was eleven
years old in two weeks!
I essayed to tranquillise Mr. Jaffrey’s mind, and to give him some
practical hints on the management of youth, with that perspicacious
wisdom which seems to be the peculiar property of bachelors and elderly
maiden ladies.
“Spank him,” I suggested, at length.
“I will!” said the old gentleman.
“And you’d better do it at once!” I added, as it flashed upon me that in
six months Andy would be a hundred and forty-three years old!—an age at
which parental discipline would have to be relaxed.
The next morning, Sunday, the rain came down as if determined to drive
the quicksilver entirely out of my poor friend. Mr. Jaffrey sat bolt
upright at the breakfast-table, looking as woe-begone as a bust of
Dante, and retired to his chamber the moment the meal was finished. As
the day advanced, the wind veered round to the north-east, and settled
itself down to work. It was not pleasant to think, and I tried not to
think, what Mr. Jaffrey’s condition would be if the weather did not mend
its manners by noon; but so far from clearing off at noon, the storm
increased in violence, and as night set in the wind whistled in a
spiteful falsetto key, and the rain lashed the old tavern as if it were
a balky horse that refused to move on. The windows rattled in the
worm-eaten frames, and the doors of remote rooms, where nobody ever
went, slammed-to in the maddest way. Now and then the tornado, sweeping
down the side of Mount Agamenticus, bowled across the open country and
struck the ancient hostelry point-blank.
Mr. Jaffrey did not appear at supper. I knew he was expecting me to come
to his room as usual, and I turned over in my mind a dozen plans to
evade seeing him that night.
[Illustration: “AN ATROCIOUS WINK.”]
The landlord sat at the opposite side of the chimney-place, with his eye
upon me. I fancy he was aware of the effect of this storm on his other
boarder; for at intervals, as the wind hurled itself against the exposed
gable, threatening to burst in the windows, Mr. Sewell tipped me an
atrocious wink, and displayed his gums in a way he had not done since
the morning after my arrival at Greenton. I wondered if he suspected
anything about Andy. There had been odd times during the past week when
I felt convinced that the existence of Miss Mehetabel’s son was no
secret to Mr. Sewell.
In deference to the gale, the landlord sat up half-an-hour later than
was his custom. At half-past eight he went to bed, remarking that he
thought the old pile would stand till morning.
He had been absent only a few minutes when I heard a rustling at the
door. I looked up and beheld Mr. Jaffrey standing on the threshold, with
his dress in disorder, his scant hair flying, and the wildest expression
on his face.
“He’s gone!” cried Mr. Jaffrey.
“Who? Sewell! Yes, he just went to bed.”
“No, not Tobias,—the boy!”
“What, run away?”
“No,—he is dead! He has fallen off a step-ladder in the red chamber and
broken his neck!”
Mr. Jaffrey threw up his hands with a gesture of despair and
disappeared. I followed him through the hall, saw him go into his own
apartment, and heard the bolt of the door drawn to. Then I returned to
the bar-room and sat for an hour or two in the ruddy glow of the fire,
brooding over the strange experience of the last fortnight.
On my way to bed I paused at Mr. Jaffrey’s door, and, in a lull of the
storm, the measured respiration within told me that the old gentleman
was sleeping peacefully.
Slumber was coy with me that night. I lay listening to the soughing of
the wind and thinking of Mr. Jaffrey’s illusion. It had amused me at
first with its grotesqueness; but now the poor little phantom was dead.
I was conscious that there had been something pathetic in it all along.
Shortly after midnight the wind sunk down, coming and going fainter and
fainter, floating around the eaves of the tavern with a gentle,
murmurous sound, as if it were turning itself into soft wings to bear
away the spirit of a little child.
* * * * *