[Transcriber's Note: Bold text is surrounded by =equal signs= and italic
text is surrounded by _underscores_.]
Within the Capes
By
HOWARD PYLE
New York
International Association of Newspapers and Authors
1901
COPYRIGHT, 1885,
BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS.
NORTH RIVER BINDERY CO.
PRINTERS AND BINDERS
NEW YORK
TO HIS FRIEND
ALFRED LEIGHTON HOWE
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
BY
THE AUTHOR
WITHIN THE CAPES.
CHAPTER I.
CERTAIN members of Captain Tom Granger’s family have asked him, time
and time again, why he did not sit down and write an account of those
things which happened to him during a certain period of his life.
These happenings, all agree, are of a nature such as rarely fall to the
lot of any man, crowding, as they did, one upon the heels of another,
so that in two years’ time more happened to Tom Granger than happens to
most men in a lifetime.
But Captain Granger has always shaken his head, and has answered that
he was no writer and that a pen never did fit nicely betwixt his stiff
fingers, as Mrs. Granger can tell them if they will ask her.
Beside this, he has hitherto had his affairs to look after, so that he
may be able to leave behind him enough of the world’s goods to help his
children and his children’s children easily along the road that he
himself found not over smooth.
Now, however, he has given up much of his business to the care of his
sons, who are mostly men well on in years, with families of their own,
and who are discreet in the management of things. Therefore, having
much more leisure time upon his hands than he has ever had in his life
before, he will undertake to do as he has been asked, and to write a
plain, straightforward story of his adventures. This he does with much
diffidence, for, as I have said, he is no very good hand with the pen
and the ink-horn. The story may be told in a rough way; nevertheless, I
believe that many of those that read it will think well of it, having a
certain tenderness for the writer thereof.
I am furthermore inclined to thus take upon myself the transcribing of
the history of these things, because that Captain Tom Granger is coming
fast to the ending of his life; and, though his latter days may be
warm and sunny, like a late Indian summer, there are those yet to come
in a few years who will not have the chance to hear of these things
from his own lips. Therefore, as there has been much gossip about
certain adventures that befell him, I would rather that they should
learn of them under mine own hand than from hearsay. Truly, things get
monstrously twisted in passing from mouth to mouth, and by the time
that the story of these doings has passed down through three or four
generations, the old gentleman might be turned into a pirate and a
murderer, for all that I know, which would be a pretty state of affairs.
I do not know how it was that Tom Granger got the title of captain, for
the highest grade that he ever reached was that of second mate of the
Privateersman _Nancy Hazlewood_. However, as no one in Eastcaster ever
had held so high a grade of the like nature up to that time, I suppose
that the wonder really is that he was not called commodore, or even
admiral.
Any one in Eastcaster can tell you where he lives; it is the large
white house, with the porch in front, that stands well back from the
road under the shadow of three broad maple trees. It is just across
the way from the Hicksite Meeting-house. You can easily tell it as you
go along the street, because there is a ship in full sail chiseled in
relief on the stone gate-post, which is very well done indeed, and was
carved by William Johnson, the stone-cutter, under mine own direction
and supervision.
I will say here, that Captain Granger will be always glad to see you
if, at any time, you should chance to come to Eastcaster. If he is not
at home, you will be likely to find him playing chequers or backgammon
at the Black Horse Tavern, just around the corner of Market street, and
nearly opposite to the court-house.
However, that is neither here nor there, and I find that I am wandering
from the point. But you must excuse and overlook that, bearing in mind
that it is the way of an old man, who has done a great deal of talking
in his day. I thank goodness that I am old enough now to know better
than to gossip and talk as much as I used to do, and am rather silent
than otherwise.
Nevertheless, I promise now that I will heave ahead with my yarn,
though it may be that I will leave some things untold that you would
like to hear, being, as I said, no great talker, in which case you must
come to Eastcaster, and then I will tell you anything that you may want
to know.
I will not enter into a long yarn concerning what happened in Tom
Granger’s life before the year 1812, for though such a yarn would hold
within it many concerns of interest, it is not for the sake of relating
them that I have thus taken my pen betwixt my fingers. It was late in
the spring of that year (1812) when he returned home after a three
years’ cruise to the East Indies.
I think that there is no joy in all the world like that of getting home
again after a long voyage, such as this had been. I do not know but
that it repays one for all the sorrow and pain of leave-taking, and
for the home-sickness that follows thereon. Even such changes as have
happened betwixt the going and returning do not seem amiss, provided
that they have not brought grief and trouble with them.
The changes that had occurred since Tom’s departure in the summer
of 1809 had brought no sadness with them. When he had gone away,
he had left his sisters, Susan and Mary, as young girls; the former
sixteen and the latter fifteen years old. They had now grown into a
pair of fine young women and were chits no longer. This was the first
and greatest change that struck Tom, so you may see how little had
happened. The folks were already beginning to tease Susan about Will
Gaines, who had just returned from Philadelphia, where he had been
studying law, and had set up an office for himself in Eastcaster.
The next day was Sunday, or First-day, as we call it in Quaker
neighborhoods, and as all of the family were going to meeting, Tom put
on his best toggery to go with them.
It was a beautiful, bright clear day, and as Tom stood on the porch
waiting for Henry, who was to go with him, his heart swelled within
him with the love of home. It seemed sweet to him to look on the young
leaves of the trees, the green meadowlands and the richness of growing
wheat, after seeing nothing for months but a wide stretch of troubled
waters; it was good to feel the balmy blowing of a breeze that was not
salt; to hear the singing of the robin and the chattering of the wren;
the crowing of the cocks and the lowing of the cattle, and not to have
in his ears the everlasting washing and gurgling of the water alongside.
The folks use to ride to meeting on horseback in the old times, the
women behind the men on pillion saddles. But Tom was a sailor, and
consequently no good figure on horseback, so he and Henry, the
youngest, set off ahead of the rest to foot it, for the homestead farm
was only a mile and a half from Eastcaster meeting.
The meeting-house looked very pleasant where it stood, back from the
street under the shadow of the two great elms in front of it. The old
meeting-house was standing then, for they did not tear it down to make
room for the new building until ’32. The present building is larger
than the old one was, and is, no doubt, lighter and better, and more
comfortable in many ways; but for all that, I have never liked it as
well as the old black and red brick meeting-house, with its high roof
running up to a point from all four corners and topped with something
that looked like a belfry, though it had no bell in it, of course.
In the old days, as now, when the weather was warm and bright and
pleasant, the men used to stand for a while around the door of their
side of the meeting, talking and chatting together before they went
into the building. Such a group was standing on the grass under the
shadow of the elm trees as Tom and his brother Henry came up the steps
that led into the meeting-house yard.
Tom knew all of them, and they came forward and shook hands with him
and welcomed him heartily. Will Gaines was amongst them, for, though he
was not a member of the Society of Friends, he went to meeting as often
as he went anywhere else. It might have been that he came on Susan’s
account, though I do not say that he did.
He was the first to recognize Tom, and he came forward and shook hands
with him and seemed very glad to see him. A young man usually is glad
to see the brother of the young woman that he wants to marry, but I
think that Will really was pleased to see Tom, for he and Tom had been
dear friends from the time that they were children together. There were
other young men of Tom’s age amongst the group: John Black, Joseph
Sparks, Henry Jackson and others. They too came forward and shook hands
with him and seemed glad to see him, though not so glad as Will Gaines
had been.
Two men were standing by the open door of the meeting-house, talking
earnestly together. One of them was Isaac Naylor, and the other was Mr.
Edmund Moor, the real estate agent. As these two men had very much to
do with Tom’s life at a later time, it may be well that I should give
you a notion of them now.
Isaac Naylor was a young man—not over thirty at that time, I should
think. He dressed very plainly, and was so serious of deportment that I
do not know that any one ever saw him smile. He never jested himself,
and never enjoyed a jest, for he was too practical for such trivial
things. It was as though the man of him had been dried into parchment
by his continued self-repression. He was well off in the world, for his
father had died the year before, and, as Isaac was the only son, he
had inherited all the property, which was very large. Although such a
young man, he was high in the meeting, sitting in the gallery with men
old enough, in some cases, to be his grandfather.
Mr. Moor was not a member of meeting, though he attended pretty
regularly. He was a large, fleshy man, not exactly fat, but full
looking. He had a smooth, goodly face and straight iron-grey hair,
brushed straight back from his forehead and behind his ears. I never
heard him say an unkind word or saw him in anything but a cordial mood.
He was always full of jests and quaint turns of speech, and never
failed to shake Tom heartily by the hand whenever he met him; yet for
all that Tom did not like him. He had an oily, unctuous way, that was
not pleasing to him; he was always so goodly that he did not seem
sincere, and always so cordial that it did not seem as though he meant
his cordiality.
Such were the two men that were talking together by the meeting-house
door, and each welcomed him in his own manner.
“How is thee, Thomas?” said Isaac, dryly.
“Why! It’s Thomas Granger! Bless my soul! Back again like a bad penny,
eh?” said Mr. Moor, and he shook Tom by the hand with great warmth.
In the meantime, Tom’s father and his two brothers, John and William,
came over from the horse shed, where they had been hitching their
horses, and joined the group, and then they all went into the
meeting-house together, taking their seats on the hard wooden benches
within.
That morning they held a silent meeting, no one speaking for all the
hour between ten and eleven o’clock. Now and then the wind would rush
in little puffs through the open window and across the gloom of the
building. A fly buzzed against a window pane, and once a robin outside
burst into a sudden gush of song.
No other sound broke the silence, saving for the rustling of a dress,
as one of the women Friends would move in her seat, or the restless
sighing of some poor boy in the back part of the building. The
overseers sat ranged along on the raised bench facing the meeting, and
amongst them was Isaac Naylor. All of them sat with their hats on,
motionless, with downcast eyes, buried in serious thought: but no one
spoke.
At such a time every one is supposed to address a sermon to his own
heart, but I am very much afraid that Tom Granger addressed none to
himself, for his thoughts flew here and there and everywhere, and his
mind was never still a moment in the chase of them. Now and then he
shifted himself uneasily on the hard wooden bench, trying to find a
more comfortable position than the one in which he was sitting, but the
seats in Friends’ meeting were not made with a thought to comfort in
those days. There was a long partition that ran down the length of the
meeting, separating the men’s from the women’s side.
After a while Tom’s eyes wandered over this partition in a way that
they had no business to do. It was toward the place where his mother
and his sisters sat that his eyes rested the most, but it was not at
them that he was looking, for Patty Penrose sat between his mother and
him.
After a man has reached the age of four and twenty, it becomes a
continued source of wonder to him how the little girls about him grow
up into young women. You leave a poor lean little chit of a thing; a
few years pass, you meet her and, lo! she is transmogrified into a
young woman, going her sedate way with very different thoughts in her
head than when you saw her last. It seems as though it were only a
week or two since you patted her upon the head and said kind things to
encourage her; now your heart shrinks at the thought of such boldness,
and you feel that she needs encouragement no longer.
When Tom had last seen Patty Penrose, three years before, he left
her just such a little chit as I have spoken to you of,—lean and not
graceful. She used to come over now and then to play with his sister
Mary, but he had not noticed her excepting when she stayed to dinner
or to supper. Even then he had not observed her very closely, and had
not had much to say to her, for she was too shy to make it a pleasure
to him to talk to her, and too young for it to be worth while for him
to put himself out to amuse her. He would give her a nod with a “How is
thee, Patty?” and then would turn his mind to other things.
Now, when he first looked at her sitting across the meeting beside
his mother, he did not know her; then he saw first one little thing
and then another, until it slowly dawned upon him that it was Patty
Penrose, though not the Patty Penrose that he had known in times past.
At first he looked with wonder and interest at the change that had come
in three years; but, after a while, his interest took a very different
shape with no wonder about it, and he thought that his sister Mary’s
friend was a great deal better worth looking at than when he had last
seen her, for Patty had grown into a very pretty girl,—a very pretty
girl, indeed.
She sat looking calmly before her; but, though she seemed sedately
unaware of his presence, as is becoming in a modest girl, I have not a
grain of doubt that she knew that Tom Granger was at meeting that day,
and, maybe, she even knew that he was looking at her at that moment.
Her head was uncovered, for she had worn a broad beaver hat, such as
they used in those days, and she held the hat in her lap. She sat with
her side turned to Tom, and it made his heart feel very warm as he
looked at her pale, delicate face, the long lashes of her eyes, the
smooth roundness of her chin and throat, and the soft curling of the
brown hair at her forehead and temples. So, as I said, he was preaching
no sermon to himself as he sat in silent meeting that day.
At length, the court-house clock around the corner of Market street
struck eleven. They all sat in silence for a minute or two longer, and
then old Thomas Winterapple shook John Stidham by the hand, and meeting
was broken. After that they all went out into the sunlight and the open
air again.
Will Gaines went over to where the young women were standing talking
together, and said a few words to Susan, and Tom followed after him.
Patty was standing beside his mother.
“Thomas, this is Patty Penrose,” said she, turning to him; “don’t thee
remember Patty?”
Tom knew that the color was rising in his face; knowing it, he felt
very uncomfortable, and that made his cheeks burn all the hotter. It
was a different matter talking to Patty now from what it had been three
years ago. Oh, yes, he remembered Patty; “How is thee, Patty?” said he,
holding out his hand to her. Her little fingers rested in his only for
a moment, and then were quickly withdrawn.
“I’m pretty well, thank thee, Thomas,” said she.
Then there was a space of silence, during which Tom was thinking of
something to say. This was no easy thing for him to do on the spur of
the moment, considering how little he knew of Patty and her ways. He
stood with his hands clasped behind him, looking at her and waiting for
a thought, and she stood looking down at the toe of her shoe. Presently
she raised her eyes to his face for a moment.
“Has thee just come back, Thomas?” said she.
“Yes; I came back yesterday afternoon.”
“Thee’s been gone a long while this time, hasn’t thee?”
“About three years.”
And then they were silent again.
Just then Isaac Naylor came up and spoke to Patty, and she turned
partly away from Tom to answer him. It seemed to Tom that it was a
relief to her to talk to some one else beside him, and no doubt it was,
for she must have felt easier with Isaac than she did with Tom, knowing
him so much better. After this, several of the young men came up, and
in a little while Patty and his sister were quite surrounded by them,
and were presently talking and laughing at a great rate, about people
and things of which Tom knew little or nothing. Isaac Naylor stood
amongst the other young men; he did not talk to Patty and Mary as they
did, but he seemed contented to remain where he was.
At last Tom’s brother Henry plucked him by the sleeve of his coat, “Is
thee ready to go now, Thomas?” said he. “Father and mother have gone
and I’m ready to go if thee is.” Henry was too young yet to talk to the
girls with any ease, and so the waiting was no pleasure to him.
“Yes; I guess I’m about ready,” said Tom. He felt that he had been
awkward and ungainly before Patty, and he would have liked to say a
word or two more to her before he left her to set himself straight in
her opinion. But he saw no chance for this in all the talk and laughter
that was going on around Mary and her, so there was nothing left for
him to do but to go.
As Henry and he walked along the turn-pike road, numbers of Friends
passed them on their way homeward from meeting.
There was a clatter of hoofs behind them, and old Elihu Penrose came
riding by with Patty back of him on the pillion saddle.
“Woah!” cried he, reigning in his horse when he had come up to Tom and
Henry. “How is thee, Thomas? I’m glad to see thee back again.”
“I’m glad to get back again,” said Tom.
“That’s right! I like to hear a young man say he’s glad to get back
home again,—it sounds well. Come over and see us some time.”
“I will,” said Tom; “I’d like to come over very much.”
“Very well; do. Come over soon. Farewell.”
Then he clicked to the horse and rode on, turning down the road that
led through the shady woods to the old mill.
“Patty Penrose’s a mighty pretty girl; ain’t she, Thomas?” said Henry.
Tom made no answer, and they walked on in silence.
At dinner time, Patty was brought up as a subject of talk.
“Don’t thee think she’s very pretty, Thomas?” said Susan.
“Well—I don’t know,” said Tom, hesitatingly; “n—not so very.” I do not
know why he should have answered as he did, but, somehow, he did not
feel like saying that he thought Patty was pretty.
“Well, I can’t help thinking as thee does about it, Thomas,” said Mary;
“I love Patty Penrose very dearly, but, I must say, I never could see
her beauty.”
“She’s the prettiest girl in the neighborhood,” said William.
“I know some people think she’s pretty,” said Mary, “but, I must say,
I don’t see where her beauty lies. Her nose isn’t good, and she has
hardly a bit of color in her face. She’s a dear good girl, but I don’t
think she’s what one would call handsome.”
“Thee isn’t of the same way of thinking as the young men,” said John.
“There isn’t one within ten miles of Eastcaster who doesn’t think that
she’s the prettiest girl in the township. There isn’t a girl in the
neighborhood who has as much company as she.”
“Nonsense,” said Susan; “what does thee know about it, John? Leave out
Isaac Naylor and John Black and the two Sharpleys and she doesn’t have
any more company than other people.”
“All right,” said John, who had an ill way of holding to an opinion and
never arguing about it, “all right, have thy own way; it doesn’t make
any difference to me; I only know what I hear the young men say about
her.”
Then Tom’s father broke into the talk and nothing more was said about
Patty. “I bought a new short-horn bull last fall, Thomas,” said he.
“We’ll go over to the cattle-yard after dinner and take a look at it,
if thee likes.”
So presently they all got up from their chairs, and the men-folks went
over to the barn-yard to take a look at the short-horn bull.
But the talk at the dinner table had not pleased Tom, though I do not
know why he should have disliked to have heard that Patty had a great
deal of attention paid her; for how could it make any difference to
him?