VI

After a lapse of four years, during which he had as completely

vanished out of the memory of Stillwater as if he had been lying all

the while in the crowded family tomb behind the South Church, Richard

Shackford reappeared one summer morning at the door of his cousin's

house in Welch's Court. Mr. Shackford was absent at the moment, and

Mrs. Morganson, an elderly deaf woman, who came in for a few hours

every day to do the house-work, was busy in the extension. Without

announcing himself, Richard stalked up-stairs to the chamber in the

gable, and went directly to a little shelf in one corner, upon which

lay the dog's-eared copy of Robinson Crusoe just as he had left it,

save the four years' accumulation of dust. Richard took the book

fiercely in both hands, and with a single mighty tug tore it from top

to bottom, and threw the fragments into the fire-place.

A moment later, on the way down-stairs, he encountered his kinsman

ascending.

"Ah, you have come back!" was Mr. Shackford's grim greeting after

a moment's hesitation.

"Yes," said Richard, with embarrassment, though he had made up his

mind not to be embarrassed by his cousin.

"I can't say I was looking for you. You might have dropped me a

line; you were politer when you left. Why do you come back, and why

did you go away?" demanded the old man, with abrupt fierceness. The

last four years had bleached him and bent him and made him look very

old.

"I didn't like the idea of Blandmann & Sharpe, for one thing,"

said Richard, "and I thought I liked the sea."

"And did you?"

"No, sir! I enjoyed seeing foreign parts, and all that."

"Quite the young gentleman on his travels. But the sea didn't

agree with you, and now you like the idea of Blandmann & Sharpe?"

"Not the least in the world, I assure you!" cried Richard. "I take

to it as little as ever I did."

"Perhaps that is fortunate. But it's going to be rather difficult

to suit your tastes. What _do_ you like?"

"I like you, cousin Lemuel; you have always been kind to me--in

your way," said poor Richard, yearning for a glimmer of human warmth

and sympathy, and forgetting all the dreariness of his uncared-for

childhood. He had been out in the world, and had found it even

harder-hearted than his own home, which now he idealized in the first

flush of returning to it. Again he saw himself, a blond-headed little

fellow with stocking down at heel, climbing the steep staircase, or

digging in the clay at the front gate with the air full of the breath

of lilacs. That same penetrating perfume, blown through the open

hall-door as he spoke, nearly brought the tears to his eyes. He had

looked forward for years to this coming back to Stillwater. Many a

time, as he wandered along the streets of some foreign sea-port, the

rich architecture and the bright costumes had faded out before him,

and given place to the fat gray belfry and slim red chimneys of the

humble New England village where he was born. He had learned to love

it after losing it; and now he had struggled back through countless

trials and disasters to find no welcome.

"Cousin Lemuel," said Richard gently, "only just us two are left,

and we ought to be good friends, at least."

"We are good enough friends," mumbled Mr. Shackford, who could not

evade taking the hand which Richard had forlornly reached out to him,

"but that needn't prevent us understanding each other like rational

creatures. I don't care for a great deal of fine sentiment in people

who run away without so much as thank you."

"I was all wrong!"

"That's what folks always say, with the delusion that it makes

everything all right."

"Surely it help,--to admit it."

"That depends; it generally doesn't. What do you propose to do?"

"I hardly know at the moment; my plans are quite in the air."

"In the air!" repeated Mr. Shackford. "I fancy that describes

them. Your father's plans were always in the air, too, and he never

got any of them down."

"I intend to get mine down."

"Have you saved by anything?"

"Not a cent."

"I thought as much."

"I had a couple of hundred dollars in my sea-chest; but I was

shipwrecked, and lost it. I barely saved myself. When Robinson

Crusoe"--

"Damn Robinson Crusoe!" snapped Mr. Shackford.

"That's what I say," returned Richard gravely. "When Robinson

Crusoe was cast on an uninhabited island, shrimps and soft-shell

crabs and all sorts of delicious mollusks--readily boiled, I've no

doubt--crawled up on the beach, and begged him to eat them; but

_I_ nearly starved to death."

"Of course. You will always be shipwrecked, and always be starved

to death; you are one of that kind. I don't believe you are a

Shackford at all. When they were not anything else they were good

sailors. If you only had a drop of _his_ blood in your veins!"

and Mr. Shackford waved his head towards a faded portrait of a

youngish, florid gentleman with banged hair and high coat-collar,

which hung against the wall half-way up the stair-case. This was the

counterfeit presentment of Lemuel Shackford's father seated with his

back at an open window, through which was seen a ship under full

canvas with the union-jack standing out straight in the wrong

direction. "But what are you going to do for yourself? You can't

start a subscription paper, and play with shipwrecked mariner, you

know."

"No, I hardly care to do that," said Richard, with a good-natured

laugh, "though no poor devil ever had a better outfit for the

character."

"What _are_ you calculated for?"

Richard was painfully conscious of his unfitness for many things;

but he felt there was nothing in life to which he was so ill adapted

as his present position. Yet, until he could look about him, he must

needs eat his kinsman's reluctant bread, or starve. The world was

younger and more unsophisticated when manna dropped from the clouds.

Mr. Shackford stood with his neck craned over the frayed edge of

his satin stock and one hand resting indecisively on the banister,

and Richard on the step above, leaning his back against the blighted

flowers of the wall-paper. From an oval window at the head of the

stairs the summer sunshine streamed upon them, and illuminated the

high-shouldered clock which, ensconced in an alcove, seemed to be

listening to the conversation.

"There's no chance for you in the law," said Mr. Shackford, after

a long pause. "Sharpe's nephew has the berth. A while ago I might

have got you into the Miantowona Iron Works; but the rascally

directors are trying to ruin me now. There's the Union Store, if they

happen to want a clerk. I suppose you would be about as handy behind

a counter as a hippopotamus. I have no business of my own to train

you to. You are not good for the sea, and the sea has probably

spoiled you for anything else. A drop of salt water just poisons a

landsman. I am sure I don't know what to do with you."

"Don't bother yourself about it at all," said Richard, cheerfully.

"You are going back on the whole family, ancestors and posterity, by

suggesting that I can't make my own living. I only want a little time

to take breath, don't you see, and a crust and a bed for a few days,

such as you might give any wayfarer. Meanwhile, I will look after

things around the place. I fancy I was never an idler here since the

day I learnt to split kindling."

"There's your old bed in the north chamber," said Mr. Shackford,

wrinkling his forehead helplessly. "According to my notion, it is not

so good as a bunk, or a hammock slung in a tidy forecastle, but it's

at your service, and Mrs. Morganson, I dare say, can lay an extra

plate at table."

With which gracious acceptance of Richard's proposition, Mr.

Shackford resumed his way upstairs, and the young man thoughtfully

descended to the hall-door and thence into the street, to take a

general survey of the commercial capabilities of Stillwater.

The outlook was not inspiring. A machinist, or a mechanic, or a

day laborer might have found a foot-hold. A man without handicraft

was not in request in Stillwater. "What is your trade?" was the

staggering question that met Richard at the threshold. He went from

workshop to workshop, confidently and cheerfully at first, whistling

softly between whiles; but at every turn the question confronted him.

In some places, where he was recognized with thinly veiled surprise

as that boy of Shackford's, he was kindly put off; in others he

received only a stare or a brutal No.

By noon he had exhausted the leading shops and offices in the

village, and was so disheartened that he began to dread the thought

of returning home to dinner. Clearly, he was a superfluous person in

Stillwater. A mortar-splashed hod-carrier, who had seated himself on

a pile of brick and was eating his noonday rations from a tin can

just brought to him by a slatternly girl, gave Richard a spasm of envy.

Here was a man who had found his place, and was establishing--what

Richard did not seem able to establish in his own case--a right to

exist.

At supper Mr. Shackford refrained from examining Richard on his

day's employment, for which reserve, or indifference, the boy was

grateful. When the silent meal was over the old man went to his

papers, and Richard withdrew to his room in the gable. He had

neglected to provide himself with a candle. However, there was

nothing to read, for in destroying Robinson Crusoe he had destroyed

his entire library; so he sat and brooded in the moonlight, casting a

look of disgust now and then at the mutilated volume on the hearth.

That lying romance! It had been, indirectly, the cause of all his

woe, filling his boyish brain with visions of picturesque adventure,

and sending him off to sea, where he had lost four precious years of

his life.

"If I had stuck to my studies," reflected Richard while

undressing, "I might have made something of myself. He's a great

friend, Robinson Crusoe."

Richard fell asleep with as much bitterness in his bosom against

DeFoe's ingenious hero as if Robinson had been a living person

instead of a living fiction, and out of this animosity grew a dream

so fantastic and comical that Richard awoke himself with a bewildered

laugh just as the sunrise reddened the panes of the chamber window.

In this dream somebody came to Richard and asked him if he had heard

of that dreadful thing about young Crusoe.

"No, confound him!" said Richard, "what is it?"

"It has been ascertained," said somebody, who seemed to Richard at

once an intimate friend and an utter stranger,--"it has been

ascertained beyond a doubt that the man Friday was not a man Friday

at all, but a light-minded young princess from one of the neighboring

islands who had fallen in love with Robinson. Her real name was

Saturday."

"Why, that's scandalous!" cried Richard with heat. "Think of the

admiration and sympathy the world has been lavishing on this precious

pair; Robinson Crusoe and his girl Saturday! That puts a different

face on it."

"Another great moral character exploded," murmured the shadowy

shape, mixing itself up with the motes of a sunbeam and drifting out

through the window. Then Richard fell to laughing in his sleep, and

so awoke. He was still confused with the dream as he sat on the edge

of his bed, pulling himself together in the broad daylight.

"Well," he muttered at length, "I shouldn't wonder! There's

nothing too bad to be believed of that man."