MR. WADDY’S RETURN
BY
THEODORE WINTHROP
Author of “Cecil Dreeme,” etc.
EDITED BY
BURTON E. STEVENSON
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1904
Copyright, 1904
By
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
_Published October, 1904_
THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS
RAHWAY, N. J.
PUBLISHERS’ NOTE
The author did not live to revise the original draft of “Mr. Waddy’s
Return,” and therefore, when his other novels were published, shortly
after his death, this one was not included. On looking it over again,
after the lapse of years, it seemed to his sister, Miss Elizabeth
W. Winthrop, too good to let die; and it was placed in the hands of
Mr. Stevenson to give it such revision and condensation as it may be
presumed that the author, had he lived, would have given it himself.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A REMARKABLE EPISODE, HITHERTO UNRECORDED,
IN THE VOYAGE OF THE “MAYFLOWER” 1
II. THE WADDYS OF DULLISH COURT, FROM WHITEGIFT
TO OUR HERO 6
III. IN WHICH MR. WADDY REACHES HALIFAX AND
MEETS WITH A MISADVENTURE 13
IV. A GENTLE LADY OF FORTUNE DECIDES TO FACE
A STORM 24
V. A WRECK AND A RESCUE 30
VI. IN WHICH MISS SULLIVAN FINDS MANY REASONS
FOR DEPARTURE 40
VII. A PEPPERY INVALID WHO DREAMS DREAMS AND
BRINGS BAD NEWS 50
VIII. MR. WADDY MUSES UPON FATE AND UNDERTAKES
A COMMISSION 58
IX. THE NABOB RE-ENTERS CIVILISATION 65
X. OUR HERO RENEWS HIS YOUTH IN THE WARMTH
OF AN OLD FRIENDSHIP 73
XI. IN WHICH THE READER IS ALLOWED TO WORSHIP
AT THE SHRINE 88
XII. THE PARABLE OF A HUMBLE BEAST OF BURDEN
AND OF LILIES THAT TOIL NOT 97
XIII. THE READER IS PRESENTED TO TWO CHARMING
GIRLS, AND SO IS MAJOR GRANBY 107
XIV. PROTECTIVE SCANDALS AND OTHER DIVERTING
HUMOURS OF A FASHIONABLE WATERING-PLACE 126
XV. MR. WADDY RECEIVES A LETTER AND GETS OUT
HIS PISTOLS 148
XVI. IN WHICH MR. HORACE BELDEN PROSPERS CERTAIN
PLANS 163
XVII. MR. BELDEN CONTEMPLATES VILLAINIES NEW
AND OLD 177
XVIII. THE BRAVE PREPARE FOR A RACE, THE FAIR
FOR A PICNIC 184
XIX. MISS CENTER’S BIRTHDAY PARTY AND WHAT
OCCURRED THEREAT 196
XX. CHIN CHIN AND PETER SKERRETT SEIZE THE
FORELOCK OF OPPORTUNITY 220
XXI. THE STORY OF DIANA AND ENDYMION 233
XXII. IN WHICH MR. BELDEN REACHES THE END OF
HIS ROPE 241
XXIII. A VOYAGE OF UNKNOWN LENGTH 258
XXIV. MR. WADDY ACCOMPLISHES HIS RETURN 266
MR. WADDY’S RETURN
CHAPTER I
A REMARKABLE EPISODE, HITHERTO UNRECORDED, IN THE VOYAGE OF THE
“MAYFLOWER”
Names must act upon character. Every preceding Waddy, save one
short-lived Ira, from the first ancestor, the primal Waddy, cook of
the _Mayflower_, had been a type of placid meekness, of mild, humble
endurance. During all Boston’s material changes, from a petty colony
under Winthrop to a great city under General Jackson, and all its
spiritual changes from Puritanism to Unitarianism, Boston divines
had pointed to the representative Waddy of their epoch as the worthy
successor of Moses upon earth--Moses the meekest man, not Moses the
stalwart smiter of rocks and irate iconoclast of golden calves.
Why, then, was Ira Waddy, with whom this tale is to concern itself,
other than his race? Why had he revolutionised the family history?
Why was he a captor, not a captive of Fate? Why was the Waddy name no
longer hid from the world in the unfragrant imprisonment and musty
gloom of a blind court in Boston, but known and seen and heard of all
men, wherever tea-chests and clipper-ships are found, or fire-crackers
do pop? Why was Ira Waddy, in all senses, the wholesale man, while
every other Waddy had been retail? Brief questions--to be answered not
so briefly in this history of his Return.
Yes, the Waddy fortunes had altered. To the small shop, the only
patrimony of the Waddy family, went little vulgar boys in days of Salem
witchcraft, in days of Dorchester sieges, and after when the Fourth of
July began to noise itself abroad as a festival of the largest liberty:
on all great festal days when parents and uncles rattled with candy
money, and coppers were certain, and on all individual festal days when
the unlooked-for copper came, then went brats, Whig and Tory, Federal
and Democrat, to the Waddys’ shop and bullied largely there. Not only
the representative Mr. Waddy did they bully and bargain into pecuniary
bewilderment and total loss of profit, but also the representative Mrs.
Waddy, a feeble, scrawny dame, whose courage died when she put the
fateful question to the representative Mr. Waddy, otherwise never her
spouse.
But there was no more bullying about the little shop. In fact, the
shop had grown giantly with the fortunes of the name. A row of stately
warehouses covered its site, and many other sites where neighbour
pride had once looked down upon it. The row was built of granite,
without ornament or gaud, enduring as the eternal hills. On its front,
cut in solid letters on a gigantic block, were the words
+-------------------+
| WADDY BUILDINGS |
+-------------------+
Ginger was sold there in dust-heaps like a Vesuvius, not gingerbread
in the amorphous penny idol; aromatic cinnamon by the ceroons of a
plundered forest, not by the chewing-stick for dull Sabbath afternoons;
tea by the barricade of chests, product of a province, not by the tin
shoeful, as the old-time Waddys had sold it for a century before the
Tea Party. And Ira Waddy owned these buildings, which he had never seen.
It is not necessary that I should speculate to discover where the
traits that distinguished Ira Waddy from his ancestors had their
origin. Of this I have accurate information. My wonder is at the delay
in a development of character certain to arrive. But late springs bring
scorching summers. Fires battened long below hatches gather strength
for one swift leap to the main-truck.
Whitegift Waddy, cook of the _Mayflower_, was meek. How he came to be
a Puritan, on the _Mayflower_, in its caboose and a cook,--out of his
element in religion, in space, in place, and in profession,--I cannot
say; these are questions that the Massachusetts Historical Society
will probably investigate, now that the Waddys are rich and can hire
cooks to give society dinners. At all events, there he was, and there
he daily made a porridge for Miles Standish, and there he peppered the
same. Now as to pepper in cream tarts there is question; in porridge
none: I do not, therefore, blame Miles, peppery himself and loving
pepper, for wrath when, one day, a bowl of pepperless insipidity was
placed before him. He sent for the cook and thus addressed him:
“Milksop! Thou hast the pepper forgot. I will teach thy caitiff life a
lesson. Ho, trencherman! Bring pepper!”
It was brought. He poured it all into the porridge, and, standing by,
compelled Waddy to swallow spoonful after spoonful. At the screams of
the victim, the Pilgrim Grandfathers, Governor Carver, Father Winslow,
and Elder Brewster, rushed from on deck into the cabin and besought the
infuriated hero to desist as he valued the life of Mrs. Susanna White,
who was soon to add a little Pilgrim to their colony.
“Enough!” said Standish. “The pepper hath entered into his soul.”
It had, indeed! Nothing was cooked on the _Mayflower_ for six days.
On the seventh, Whitegift Waddy re-entered the caboose. He had always
been a meek, he was now a crushed man. Yet there seemed to have grown
within him, as we sometimes see in those the world has wronged, a quiet
confidence in a redressing future.
Pepper, thus implanted in the Waddy nature, seemed to have no effect
for generations. It was, however, slowly leavening their lumpishness.
It was impelling them to momentary tricks of a strange vivacity. At
last, the permeating was accomplished, and our hero, Ira, the first
really alive Waddy, was born. I have said the first, but there was
another Ira Waddy who, at one period in his brief career, showed a
momentary sparkle of the smouldered flame. Of him a word anon, as his
fate had to do with the fates of others, strangely interwoven with the
fate of his great-nephew and namesake.