WEST INJY LANE
Every one called it "West Injy Lane," but some of the property holders
had put up a sign-post with the words, "Washington Avenue."
There was never a Washington Avenue which looked so little like one. A
pleasant old road,--it had not greatly changed its appearance since the
day when the man for whom it had been renamed passed by. It meandered
along, innocent of sidewalks, and bordered, right and left, with
grass. A pond at one end was musical all the spring and summer,--first
with the high notes of the "peepers," then with the soprano trilling
of toads, and finally with the gruff performances of basso-profundo
bullfrogs.
Cows and sheep nibbled the grass at the sides of the road, or grazed
in the meadows beyond the stone walls. There were only five or six
farm-houses throughout the mile and a half of the lane, and their
barns stood open all summer, while the swallows flashed in and out.
Solemn files of white ducks waddled down to the pond, where they
spread devastation among the minnows and polliwogs, and then waddled
contentedly back again, clapping their yellow bills as if smacking
their lips. Their bills and feet gleamed in the sunlight.
It does not seem that any kind of weather but bright sunshine ever
prevailed in West Injy Lane. Certainly, Ed Mason and I did not see
how it could be improved. At one end, near the pond, was the country
grocery where you could get weighed on the scales, and buy jumbles
(shaped like an elephant) at two for a cent. Near the other end was
Haskell's Field,--a hallowed spot, for it always contained one or two
grass-covered rings, the relics of circuses past and the promise of
circuses to come.
Midway between the two, and in front of one of the houses, was a
gigantic and half-ruined elm, already celebrated in legend and verse.
Its romantic story never impressed us, except to make me wonder how it
happened that when the young man had stuck a willow branch into the
ground in front of his sweetheart's dwelling, an elm tree should have
sprouted therefrom.
"'Twasn't a willow," said Ed Mason, as we walked through the lane one
morning, "'twas a piece of elm."
"_'Twas_ a willow," I retorted.
"How do you know?"
"'Cos Charley Carter told me."
"He don't know anything 'bout it."
"Yes, he does, too! Fred Noyes told him, and Peter Bailey told _him_,
and Cap'n Bannister told _him_."
Ed was silent.
The name of Captain Bannister was potent. He lived in a house on this
very lane,--a small, red-faced man with black hair. He had been a
sailor, it was said, but he was a farmer now, so far as he had any
occupation at all. He had no family and no servants, and he dwelt alone
with a fluctuating number of cats.
His house was painted white,--spotless and shining. It was without
blinds, and so dazzling as to make you sneeze when you looked at
it. The path up to his front door was lined, not with the usual
white-washed rocks, but with large white sea-shells from some foreign
country. Back of these were double rows of cinnamon pinks, the
Captain's joy and pride.
Once I had been taken by my elders to call on Captain Bannister. He
showed us around his house,--a museum of curiosities. But of all the
stuffed birds, all the spiny and prickly fishes, all the curious bits
of coral and wooden ships somehow stuffed into glass bottles,--none
had seemed so interesting as a small box filled with what the Captain
assured me was "tooth-powder from China." That the Chinese should know
and use a pink substance so much like that with which I had to struggle
every morning seemed to me nothing less than marvellous.
The fact had another aspect as well,--it robbed foreign travel of
one of its charms. If one could wander so far and still be pursued
by enervating domestic customs, one might as well stay at home. Why
subject yourself to the dangers of the deep if liberty fled always
before your coming?
One room in the Captain's house gave me a fright. It was a small, dark
apartment, a closet for size. In it the owner had chosen to place four
or five lay figures in old-fashioned garments. They had dried pumpkins
for heads and they sat in ghostly silence amid the gloom. There was a
man with a pipe in his mouth sitting in front of an empty fireplace,
an old woman, and two or three children. There was even a baby in a
cradle,--its yellow, pumpkin face looking out from a ruffled cap.
I did not linger there.
Ever since that visit the silent family had haunted my dreams, and I
more than half suspected that Captain Bannister would like to lock me
up in the room with them. I did not know what advantage he would get
by such an action, but its possibility seemed very near.
Even on the bright morning that Ed Mason and I, walking through West
Injy Lane engaged in a discussion about the old tree--even then, to me
the Captain's house was an eerie place.
There was no reason--aside from the pumpkin family--why it should be
so. It glistened with all its usual brightness, and there was the owner
himself puttering about in the little garden. Ed Mason walked up to the
picket fence, bold as a lion, and addressed the captain in an easy,
conversational tone.
"Good mornin', Cap'n Bannister!"
The sailor faced about.
"Hullo, boys! Won't yer come in?... Yer needn't be afraid, I won't hurt
yer."
This last was for my benefit; I had not shown as much readiness to
enter the gate as had my companion.
"Come right in."
So I went in. The next remark of the old man did much to put everything
on an agreeable footing.
"Do you boys like peaches?"
We did like peaches, and we said so.
"Well, just wait till I pull up two or three of these plantains, an'
we'll go round to the side of the house an' see if there's any on the
tree.... There ... now come on."
We followed him around the corner of the house. A black cat with a
white breast came running to meet his master.
"Hullo, here's Nickerdemus; I told him to watch the peaches. Did yer
keep the bees away, Nickerdemus?"
Nicodemus yawned and gave every sign of having been asleep, after the
manner of his kind when there is no personal advantage in keeping awake.
The captain put a ladder against the tree, climbed up, and began to
drop peaches to us. Until then I had a faint suspicion that he might
be merely luring us on and on toward the room where sat the pumpkin
family. But all such suspicions vanished now. You cannot think ill of a
man who gives you peaches like those.
Ed Mason intended to find out about the old elm tree, and he broached
the subject fearlessly.
"Cap'n, Sam says that _you_ said they planted a piece of willow where
the old elm came up."
"What's that? No; they didn't plant no willow, but all this about the
young feller that came callin' on his girl, an' cut a stick to keep off
the dogs, an' stuck the stick in the ground in front of her door, an'
then went away an' forgot it, an' the tree grew outer that stick,--all
that's bosh. Don't yer believe it."
We promised not to believe it. The captain came down the ladder with
two more peaches, which he passed over to us. He stood, watching us eat
them, and enlarged on the subject of the tree.
"I know all 'bout it, 'cos my second cousin, Silas Winkley, lived
there, an' his great-gran'father planted that there tree jus' like
any other tree. Silas's great-gran'father, ol' Deacon Plummer, wa'n't
callin' on any girls there, 'cos he was up'ards of seventy when he
planted the tree, an' had children an' gran'-children of his own. These
here poems is all cat's-foot-in-yer-pocket!"
We did not know exactly what that meant, but it seemed to cast some
doubt on the truth of the legend, at any rate.
"Silas Winkley," ruminated the Captain, "thought he was a sailor.
He went two or three v'yges with ol' Dick Cutter an' fin'lly he got
Melvin Bailey,--gran'-father of _this_ Melvin that's alive now, to
give him command of a ship. I've heard my father tell 'bout it lots of
times,--he was second mate. She was the _Nanny Karr_,--spelt it with
a K, they did then. Well, Silas took her down as fur as Nantucket all
right,--hee, hee, hee!"
Here Captain Bannister paused and chuckled for a few moments.
"Yes, siree, he got her down there without no difficulties,--hee, hee,
hee! an' then he run her plumb on to the south side of the island. In a
dead ca'm, mind yer, an' on a night as clear as a whistle. The crew all
went ashore,--they could a dropped off'n her bows on to land without
wettin' their feet a'most, an' the next mornin' Silas went aboard ag'in
to git his wife's knittin'-needles,--his wife was along with him."
The captain paused again to choke and wheeze.
"Well, in a day or two there come a high tide, an' they got
whale-boats, an' hawsers, an' some fellers on the island, an' they got
her off all right,--she wa'n't no ways hurt in the sand, an' they went
on their way rej'icin',--'cept Melvin Bailey, who had had a hunderd an'
forty dollars of his forked out to the fellers with the whale-boats.
However, he didn't know nothin' 'bout this till months arterwards.
Silas set out ag'in, he was bound for Fayal,--d'yer know where Fayal
is?"
We were silent, till at last I suggested:
"It's in Spain, I mean Portugal, isn't it?"
"Now look at that! I betcher when I was your age there wa'n't any boy
in _this_ town that didn't know Fayal. It's one o' the Azores, an' some
ways this side of Spain or Portugal either. Well, Silas was bound for
Fayal, but he had the most terrible luck you ever see. Fust, he run
into a gale and got drove way south of the Capes. When he wrote back to
Melvin Bailey 'bout this gale he said that the seas run tremenjus high,
an' that the ship was put into great jeopardy. Well, Melvin wa'n't what
yer call a very edjicated man, an' he got down his atlas an'--hee, hee,
hee! an' tried to find Great Jeopardy! Hee, hee, hee!"
I thought I was not appreciating the joke to its utmost, so I inquired
politely:
"Where _is_ Great Jeopardy, Cap'n?"
"It ain't nowhere, son. That's just the pint of the hull thing,--there
ain't no such place! 'Jeopardy' means _danger_, an' all Silas meant
was that, owin' to the gale, the ship was put into danger,--hee, hee,
hee! I s'pose Melvin thought 'twas one of them islands like the Lesser
Antilles, or some of _them_."
This time Ed Mason and I could join in Captain Bannister's mirth. The
captain, still chuckling, led the way across the yard and sat down on
the stone doorstep, warm in the noon sunshine. Ed and I perched on
a grass banking beside him to hear the further adventures of Silas
Winkley.
"Well, Silas he kep' havin' bad luck. His fust mate, Andy Spauldin',
was took down sick pretty soon with yaller janders, an' that left Silas
an' my father to navigate the ship. It was my father's fust v'yge as an
officer, an' I guess he wa'n't no great shakes navigatin',--though he
was most as good as Silas was, at that."
"In 'bout two weeks they made what Silas thought was Fayal. Silas
sailed into harbor as proud as Nebberkernezzar, when one of the men
come up an' says, says he, 'That ain't Fayal, Cap'n,' but Silas told
him to shut his mouth, he guessed he knew where he was without no Joppa
clam-digger tellin' him his business. Yer see Silas he was born over to
Ipswich, an' terrible proud of it,--I dunno why. But after he'd come
to anchor, an' he'd got on his shore clothes, he got into the boat an'
went ashore. It didn't take him long to find out that the feller was
right; it wa'n't Fayal, it wa'n't even one of the Azores, he hadn't
made no east'ard at all,--hee, hee, hee! Hee, hee, hee! It was--hee,
hee, hee!"
The captain's laughing was so prolonged this time, he was so doubled
up with excruciating merriment as to cause us some anxiety. He coughed
and strangled, and his usually red face became deep purple. Finally he
managed to control himself enough to gasp faintly:--
"It was one of the _West Injies_! Yessir, Silas had sailed pretty nigh
due south after the gale was over, an' here he was on one of the West
Injy Islands. I dunno what one: my father said Silas wouldn't never
tell 'em, though _he_ reckoned it might 'a' been Cubia. Joe Noyes was
in the crew, an' he said it was further to the east'ard than Cubia, but
it was one of the West Injies all right. The story got out, of course,
when the _Nanny_ got back here, an,' when Silas come down to live on
this lane with his mother's folks,--for Melvin Bailey didn't ask him
to command no more ships,--why then they began to call this West Injy
Lane. That wa'n't its name,--'twas Plummer's Lane, but folks has called
it West Injy Lane ever since,--'cept these cotty-dummers that want it
called Washington Avenue. Yessir, that's the way it happened."
And then the captain added, somewhat irrelevantly:--
"So yer see I know all 'bout that tree, an' yer don't want to believe
any of them poets!"