Mrs. Peter Lunn was a plump little woman who bobbed her head like a
pigeon when she walked. Her best dress was a handsome, if not new,
black silk which Captain Lunn, her lamented husband, had bought many
years before in the port of Bristol. The decline of shipping interests
had cost this worthy shipmaster not only the better part of his small
fortune, but also his health and spirits; and he had died a poor man
at last, after a long and trying illness. Such a lingering disorder,
with its hopes and despairs, rarely affords the same poor
compensations to a man that it does to a woman; the claims upon public
interest and consideration, the dignity of being assailed by any
ailment out of the common course--all these things are to a man but
the details of his general ignominy and impatience.
Captain Peter Lunn may have indulged in no sense of his own
consequence and uniqueness as an invalid; but his wife bore herself as
a woman should who was the heroine in so sad a drama, and she went and
came across the provincial stage, knowing that her audience was made
up of nearly the whole population of that little seaside town. When
the curtain had fallen at last, and the old friends--seafaring men and
others and their wives--had come home from Captain Lunn's funeral, and
had spoken their friendly thoughts, and reviewed his symptoms for what
seemed to them to be the last time, everybody was conscious of a real
anxiety. The future of the captain's widow was sadly uncertain, for
every one was aware that Mrs. Lunn could now depend upon only a scant
provision. She was much younger than her husband, having been a second
wife, and she was thrifty and ingenious; but her outlook was
acknowledged to be anything but cheerful. In truth, the honest grief
that she displayed in the early days of her loss was sure to be better
understood with the ancient proverb in mind, that a lean sorrow is
hardest to bear.
To everybody's surprise, however, this able woman succeeded in keeping
the old Lunn house painted to the proper perfection of whiteness;
there never were any loose bricks to be seen on the tops of her
chimneys. The relics of the days of her prosperity kept an air of
comfortable continuance in the days of her adversity. The best black
silk held its own nobly, and the shining roundness of its handsome
folds aided her in looking prosperous and fit for all social
occasions. She lived alone, and was a busy and unprocrastinating
housekeeper. She may have made less raspberry jam than in her earlier
days, but it was always pound for pound; while her sponge-cake was
never degraded in its ingredients from the royal standard of twelve
eggs. The honest English and French stuffs that had been used in the
furnishing of the captain's house so many years before faded a little
as the years passed by, but they never wore out. Yet one cannot keep
the same money in one's purse, if one is never so thrifty, and so
Mrs. Lunn came at last to feel heavy at heart and deeply troubled. To
use the common phrase of her neighbors, it was high time for her to
make a change. She had now been living alone for four years, and it
must be confessed that all those friends who had admired her
self-respect and self-dependence began to take a keener interest than
ever in her plans and behavior.
The first indication of Mrs. Lunn's new purpose in life was her
mournful allusion to those responsibilities which so severely tax the
incompetence of a lone woman. She felt obliged to ask advice of a
friend; in fact, she asked the advice of three friends, and each
responded with a cordiality delightful to describe. It happened that
there were no less than three retired shipmasters in the old seaport
town of Longport who felt the justice of our heroine's claims upon
society. She was not only an extremely pleasing person, but she had
the wisdom to conceal from Captain Asa Shaw that she had taken any one
for an intimate counselor but himself; and the same secrecy was
observed out of deference to the feelings and pride of Captain Crowe
and Captain Witherspoon. The deplored necessity of re-shingling her
roof was the great case in which she threw herself upon their advice
and assistance.
Now, if it had been the new planking of a deck, or the selection and
stepping of a mast, the counsel of two of these captains would have
been more likely to avail a helpless lady. They were elderly men, and
had spent so much of their lives at sea that they were not very well
informed about shingling their own houses, having left this to their
wives, or agents, or some other land-fast persons. They recognized the
truth that it would not do to let the project be publicly known, for
fear of undue advantage being taken over an unprotected woman; but
each found his opportunity to acquire information, and to impart it in
secret to Mrs. Lunn. It sometimes occurred to the good woman that she
had been unwise in setting all her captains upon the same course,
especially as she really thought that the old cedar shingles might
last, with judicious patching, for two or three years more. But, in
spite of this weakness of tactics, she was equal to her small
campaign.
It now becomes necessary that the reader should have some closer
acquaintance with the captains themselves; and to that end confession
must be made of the author's belief in a theory of psychological
misfits, or the occasional occupation of large-sized material bodies
by small-sized spiritual tenants, and the opposite of this, by which
small shapes of clay are sometimes animated in the noblest way by
lofty souls. This was the case with Captain Witherspoon, who, not
being much above five feet in height, bore himself like a giant, and
carried a cane that was far too tall for him. Not so Captain Crowe,
who, being considerably over six feet, was small-voiced and easily
embarrassed, besides being so unconscious of the strength and size of
his great body that he usually bore the mark of a blow on his
forehead, to show that he had lately attempted to go through a door
that was too low. He accounted for himself only as far as his eyes,
and in groping between decks, or under garret or storehouse eaves, the
poor man was constantly exposing the superfluous portion of his frame
to severe usage. His hats were always more or less damaged. He was
altogether unaware of the natural dignity of his appearance, and bore
himself with great honesty and simplicity, as became a small and timid
person. But little Captain Witherspoon had a heart of fire. He spoke
in a loud and hearty voice. He was called "The Captain" by his
townsfolk, while other shipmasters, active or retired, were given
their full and distinctive names of Captain Crowe, Captain Eli
Proudfit, or Captain Asa Shaw, as the case might be.
Captain Asa Shaw was another aspirant for the hand of Mrs. Maria Lunn.
He had a great deal more money than his rivals, and was the owner of a
tugboat, which brought a good addition to his income, since Longport
was at the mouth of a river on which there was still considerable
traffic. He lacked the dignity and elegance of leisure which belonged
to Captains Crowe and Witherspoon, but the fact was patent that he was
a younger man than they by half a dozen years. He was not a member of
one of the old Longport families, and belonged to a less eminent
social level. His straight-forwardness of behavior and excellent
business position were his chief claims, besides the fact that he was
not only rich, but growing richer every day. His drawbacks were the
carping relatives of his late wife, and his four unruly children.
Captain Crowe felt himself assured of success in his suit, because he
was by no means a poor man, and because he owned the best house in
town, over which any woman might be proud to reign as mistress; but he
had the defect of owing a home to two maiden sisters who were envious
and uneasy at the very suggestion of his marrying again. They
constantly deplored the loss of their sister-in-law, and paid
assiduous and open respect to her memory in every possible way. It
seemed certain that as long as they could continue the captain's habit
of visiting her grave, in their company, on pleasant Sundays, he was
in little danger of providing a successor to reign over them. They had
been very critical and hard-hearted to the meek little woman while she
was alive, and their later conduct may possibly have been moved by
repentance.
As for the third admirer of Mrs. Lunn, Captain Witherspoon, he was an
unencumbered bachelor who had always dreamed of marrying, but had
never wished to marry any one in particular until Maria Lunn had
engaged his late-blossoming affections. He had only a slender estate,
but was sure that if they had been able to get along apart, they could
get on all the better together. His lonely habitation was with a deaf,
widowed cousin; his hopes were great that he was near to having that
happy home of his own of which he had dreamed on land and sea ever
since he was a boy. He was young at heart, and an ardent lover, this
red-faced little old captain, who walked in the Longport streets as if
he were another Lord Nelson, afraid of nobody, and equal to his
fortunes.
To him, who had long admired her in secret, Maria Lunn's confidence in
regard to the renewing of her cedar shingles had been a golden joy. He
could hardly help singing as he walked, at this proof of her
confidence and esteem, and the mellowing effect of an eleven o'clock
glass of refreshment put his willing tongue in daily danger of telling
his hopes to a mixed but assuredly interested company. As he walked by
the Lunn house, on his way to and from the harbor side, he looked at
it with a feeling of relationship and love; he admired the clean white
curtains at the windows, he envied the plump tortoise-shell cat on the
side doorstep; if he saw the composed and pleasant face of Maria
glancing up from her sewing, he swept his hat through the air with as
gallant a bow as Longport had ever seen, and blushed with joy and
pride. Maria Lunn owned to herself that she liked him best, as far as
he himself was concerned; while she invariably settled it with her
judicious affections that she must never think of encouraging the
captain, who, like herself, was too poor already. Put to the final
test, he was found wanting; he was no man of business, and had lost
both his own patrimony and early savings in disastrous shipping
enterprises, and still liked to throw down his money to any one who
was willing to pick it up. But sometimes, when she saw him pass with a
little troop of children at his heels, on their happy way to the
candy-shop at the corner, she could not forbear a sigh, or to say to
herself, with a smile, that the little man was good-hearted, or that
there was nobody who made himself better company; perhaps he would
stop in for a minute as he came up the street again at noon. Her
sewing was not making, but mending, in these days; and the more she
had to mend, the more she sat by one of her front windows, where the
light was good.