That evening, Miss Elizabeth sat in high state at her tea-table, behind
the silver service, which was at once her pride and her greatest
responsibility. The possession of a silver service was, of course,
a badge of the greatest respectability, and Miss Elizabeth did not
allow one jot of the dignity consequent thereon to be abated. She was
a likeness of her brother done in vinegar. She had his bright eyes,
prominent nose, and firmly closed mouth, but her skin was very white
and fair. Her hair, on her depressed, blue-veined temples, was done
into rigid curls, as formalized as the waves on an English lawyer’s
wig. What a wonderful crystallization a formal curl is! Compare the
Sun-god’s careless, waving locks with Aunt Elizabeth’s gray corkscrew
curls! Her figure was very slight, and her dress gray and formal. She
was exquisitely neat in appearance, and her hands and feet were small
and pretty, and she was very proud of them. Poor Aunt Elizabeth! She
was proud of many things, but there had been little joy in her solitary
life.
The elderly ladies in Oldbury declared that Elizabeth Woodbury had
never had a love affair, but how did they know the secrets of the
withered virgin’s heart? Among certain kindly women, there is a saying
prevalent that every woman of thirty, be she fair or ill-favored, has
received at least one offer of marriage. Let us hope that this may be
so, however improbable it seems to those who dwell in our Eastern
States, where the fair sex so greatly preponderates; for it is pleasant
to think that every heart has been at least once warmed by the sunshine
of love.
[Illustration: “MISS ELIZABETH SAT IN HIGH STATE AT HER TEA-TABLE.”]
For aught any one knew, Aunt Elizabeth may have been ill-treated by a
faithless lover, or she may have requested any number of disconsolate
suitors to endeavor to forget her. Certainly there was in her chaste
apartment, in an upper bureau drawer, carefully covered with an Indian
silk handkerchief, a miniature of a young man in a British uniform:
James had found this one day, when rummaging the drawers for pennies.
On discovering her nephew at this outrageous piece of intrusion, Aunt
Elizabeth had boxed his ears soundly, and her eyes were red when next
he saw her.
But as she sat at the supper-table this evening over her shining silver
service, she seemed far removed from the darts of Cupid.
The table was spread with a good New England supper; an excellent
informal meal, too seldom enjoyed in these days of late dinners and
borrowed English manners. Against the rich gloss of the Spanish
mahogany table, the silver gleamed, as no silver service can shine
unless rubbed by the hands of a gentlewoman.
The blue china plates were heaped with pleasant burdens of cold
chicken, strawberries, preserves, cakes, and hot rolls. A great glass
pitcher of milk and a plate of butter from the Captain’s farm stood in
the middle of the table. The room was hung with family portraits and
conspicuous among them Copley’s portrait of Rev. James Cheever, in a
black gown and white bands, surprisingly good in texture; his waxen
but well-shaped hands holding the election sermon preached once by
him before the Massachusetts legislature, a discourse which had not
been filled with loyalty to King George. Two female Woodbury ancestors
simpered in faded pastel on either side of the reverend gentleman, and
the Captain himself, in continental uniform, stood amid the rage and
turmoil of battle, defying the scarlet-coated British. The good old
gentleman, as he sat at his supper-table, looked almost as stern as his
warlike picture; for the obstinacy of his son in struggling against the
plans which had been made for him, sadly troubled the old man.
“Elizabeth,” he said, breaking for the first time the silence which had
followed the grace before meat, “I have just told the boy that he must
go to college next month.”
Miss Elizabeth gave a severe sniff, and looked at the portrait of the
Puritan divine, as if to show her idea of the gulf which lay between
him and his degenerate descendant.
“I hope that it will be all for the best, Brother John; that is all I
have to say about it,” she replied, after her withering glance at the
picture. “There is little of the saint about _that_ boy!”
“He is a fine, high-spirited fellow, without a mean streak in him,”
replied her brother, rather hotly. “A boy must be a boy, after all.”
Miss Elizabeth shook her head sadly, as if to express a doubt as
to whether boys ought to be boys after all, when the culprit under
discussion slouched into the room with red eyes, and hair which a hasty
application of brush and comb had made smooth only on the surface, the
locks below still being in delightful confusion.
He took his seat at the table, after having inclined his head slightly
towards his father and aunt, and proceeded to attack his supper with an
appetite undiminished by the thought that he was not in the good books
of the rest of the family.
Finally, not liking the gloomy silence which hung over the table, he
looked up from his plate and said:
“A schooner came in to-day from Havana. I saw her lying at anchor in
the harbor when I came in from sailing. She doesn’t belong here.”
“How did you find out she sailed from Havana?” asked the Captain.
“I hailed her as I sailed by,” replied James. “There was a tall man
leaning over the starboard rail, and he told me that she was the
_Tempest_ from Havana, laden with sugar. There was a monkey running
up the rigging, a funny fellow with no tail, and a yellow parrot in a
cage swinging from the main-boom. What do you suppose the man asked
me? Whether Captain John Woodbury was alive, and if he still lived in
Oldbury.”
“What kind of a looking man was he?” exclaimed the Captain.
“Oh, he was about six feet tall, I should say. He was smooth shaven and
had a hooked nose. He stuttered a good deal, and waved his arm in the
air when he stuck at a word as if he was trying to pull it out.”
The Captain and his sister looked at each other for a moment. “Did he
say anything more?”
“No, sir; but the parrot cried out something in Spanish, and he covered
up the cage with a sail cover and swore at the bird. I sailed up to the
wharf, and he came to the port side of the schooner and watched me as
I picked up the moorings. Do you know who he is from my description,
father?”
“I knew a man once who had the trick of stuttering and raising his
arm as you describe,” answered the Captain, in a sad voice, as if an
unpleasant remembrance had been recalled to his mind. “But he has been
dead these many years.”
Miss Elizabeth seemed much interested in the conversation of the last
few minutes, and kept turning her eyes towards the portrait of the Rev.
James Cheever.
At this moment there was a sharp triple knock at the front door, a
knock which echoed through the big hall and made the three people at
the supper-table start in their chairs. The maid-servant ran to open
the door, the Captain and James involuntarily following her. As they
stood in the hall room James heard the stuttering voice which had
spoken to him from the schooner and saw the arm waving against the
glowing sunset light which slanted in through the front door.
The Captain walked forward mechanically, and the stranger, brushing
past the girl, who shrank back, approached him and held out his hand.
“John, you don’t k-now m-me?” he stammered, as the Captain looked at
him with dazed face.
“By George! Thomas Cheever! I heard of your death at La Guayra ten
years ago.”
“And you were g-glad to hear it, I suppose,” answered the stranger,
rather grimly; then, pointing to James, he asked, “Is this your
boy? Why, he is the very chap I saw out sailing in the harbor this
afternoon.”
“It’s your uncle, Thomas Cheever,” said the Captain in a low voice.
“Why, Uncle Tom is dead,” said James, sidling away from the stranger,
not knowing what to make of the apparition.
The strange man deposited a valise on the floor, and the Captain
motioned him towards the dining-room, the three maintaining a strange
constrained silence.
The Captain did not seem to fully grasp the whole bearings of this
resurrection. Thomas Cheever had disappeared from Oldbury at the
end of the last century, leaving behind him a name stained with low
dissipation and with suspicions of worse things. He had written to his
father but once from the West India Islands, where the vessel upon
which he had embarked had touched. This letter had been a demand for
money, without a word of affection for the broken-down old parson.
There was a long interval during which nothing had been heard of him,
and finally the news came from a merchant at La Guayra that Cheever
had been one of the crew of a vessel, more than suspected of piracy,
and that he had met his death from a knife-stab in a street fight. His
father had never mentioned his name after his disgraceful actions, and
his tender-hearted sister, while she shed a few tears for the brother,
who had been a pretty boy once, could not but feel relieved that the
scapegrace should trouble the family no more.
In the dining-room Miss Elizabeth sat pale and trembling. She had, with
a woman’s instinctive perception, felt that Tom Cheever had come back
to life and mischief again, as soon as James had described the stutter
and the waving arm. As the three came into the dining-room, lighted
with candles dimly twinkling in the twilight, she looked sharply and
sternly at the returned prodigal. He seemed a little backward in
coming forward, and he shuffled his feet uneasily; for in all these
years he had not forgotten the tang of Miss Woodbury’s tongue.
“Indeed, Thomas Cheever!” said that organ in a clear, shrill treble,
“having died, much to every one’s satisfaction, it is a great pity that
you could not stay dead.”
Cheever smiled, a half-humorous, half-cunning smile, though his eyes
turned a deeper green, and shot a gleam of hatred at the old lady.
“Well, Miss Woodbury, in waking to a new life, it is agreeable to be
welcomed by an angel!”
“I do not wish any impertinence, Thomas Cheever,” replied the frank
spinster, returning his malevolent gleam with a scornful look, the
value of which her spectacles enhanced. “For twelve years you let
your family believe you dead. What have you been doing all this time?
Nothing good, I’ll warrant.”
The Captain waved his hand as if to enjoin silence upon his sister, and
motioned Cheever to draw up a chair to the table. The latter did as he
was bid, and helping himself in sailor-fashion from the dishes before
him, proceeded to eat his supper. The others watched him intently, with
somewhat of the feeling that one would have in entertaining a burglar,
who had ill-concealed designs upon the spoons.
His rough black hair was short-cropped and tinged with gray; his skin
bronzed and weather-beaten; the lines on his face were deeply drawn;
his green eyes flitted from side to side and did not meet the gaze of
his inspectors; his thin and long frame was clad in a rough blue suit
of nautical cut. “Vagabond” was written on every feature of the man.
James watched him with open eyes, as he cut off junks of bread with
his knife and covered them with butter before eating them. The Captain,
at the head of the table, twisted the fob of his watch around, and
glanced uneasily at his brother-in-law, while Miss Woodbury, in her
stony glare, seemed to protest against the very existence of any person
so shameless and wicked.
The hungry man’s first keen appetite was soon appeased by his rapid
method of shovelling his food into his mouth, and dropping his knife
and fork for a moment, he looked uneasily at the others.
“I wasn’t killed in that fight, you see--I was attacked in the dark,
along by the wharves as I was going to my ship, and stabbed in the
back. I grappled with the fellow, a cursed ‘Yellow-belly’--I beg your
pardon, Miss Woodbury, that’s what they call them.”
The Captain still seemed dazed at the events of the evening, and
sat listening to his relation’s stammering speech without changing
expression. James was fascinated with the curious gestures of the
waving hand, which seemed to pull out the obstinate words over which
the speaker stuck, as if they were corks in a bottle. At this juncture
the muscles of Cheever’s neck stood out in the physical strain of the
attempts to master the obstinate consonants. His mouth gaped open, the
corners curving to form the word, which finally came out with a pop as
if it had been a material thing sticking in his throat.
“I took his knife away and cut his throat with it, and we were found in
the morning lying in a pool of blood. Mine was an awful wound; my ship
sailed away, leaving me for dying in the prison hospital. I recovered,
though God knows how I did so in that fearful place. The man who
attacked me had influential relations in Venezuela, and they swore that
I had tried to rob him, and that he had stabbed me in self-defence. I
was kept in the prison there for five years, without a trial. You’ve
seen a Spanish-American prison, Captain Woodbury, haven’t you?” The
vagabond’s face was contorted with disgust as he spoke, and the Captain
nodded assent to his question.
“Five years in that hell, with the vilest of mankind, with no covering
but an old blanket, fed with stuff poked through the bars at me as if I
were a wild beast. It was an awful time.” He shuddered as he spoke, and
looked around the group for sympathy.
“Think of it,” he kept on, “five years in such a place as that; I
think it was punishment enough for all the evil I have ever done. I
was finally set free, through the aid of an American sea-captain, with
whom I managed to communicate. He gave me a berth on his ship, and I
went to Liverpool with him. I didn’t write home. I knew they thought me
dead, and, as Miss Woodbury has kindly suggested, I thought I’d better
stay dead. Since then I have knocked about the world on ships; the Lord
knows where I haven’t been, and am now mate on the Baltimore schooner,
_Tempest_, at anchor in this harbor. When I found myself at Oldbury, I
came to life again. It is simple enough. When did he die?” he suddenly
asked, nodding his head at his father’s portrait.
“In January, 1806,” answered the Captain, solemnly.
“And my sister, your wife?”
“She died seven years before her father.”
“Did he take it hard, when I ran away?”
“He never mentioned your name from that day to the day of his death,”
answered Miss Woodbury in sharp metallic tones.
“Well, I wasn’t exactly a model son,” replied Cheever, after a moment’s
silence, during which he stuck his knife rather savagely into a piece
of bread. “And Sally Fairbanks, is she alive?” Something of a blush
came over the man’s face as he asked the question.
“She married Joshua Pickering, who died and left her a widow,” answered
Miss Woodbury--as if Joshua could have died and left her in any other
status.
“So Sally married, did she?” Cheever inquired, “and she didn’t care
when she heard of my death either, I suppose; she would be about as
glad to see me as you folks are, if I should go to see her. Have they
stopped talking about me in town?”
“Years ago; your tombstone is in the burying-ground on the hill, set
there by your father,” answered the spinster. “I guess, if you don’t
want to find yourself in a fix, you’d better not--”
“James,” said the Captain, suddenly remembering that the boy was
listening with all his ears, “leave the room.”
Reluctantly, from the presence of this great mystery, the boy withdrew,
gazing with open eyes at his uncanny uncle as he left. When the door
had been closed by his reluctant and slow-moving hands, Miss Woodbury
continued her interrupted speech.
“You’d better not let it be known that you’ve come back to life. The
Law does not forget, though other people do.”
Cheever winced for a moment under this home-thrust, but soon rallied to
ask with a droll stutter:
“Do they say anything flattering about me on my tombstone?”
“Only this, ‘Thomas Cheever, son of James Cheever, D.D. Born in
Oldbury, April 1778; died in La Guayra, Venezuela, Feb. 23, 1799.’”
“I thought that a tombstone, like Hope, always told some ‘flattering
tale,’” murmured Cheever, his lips twisting into a humorous curve. “I
think the old gentleman might at least have put something flattering
on the stone, if only to wish me to rest in peace. I must look up
my burial-place before I leave town. If it’s still such a gossiping
old place as it used to be, I suppose they have by this time got
hold of the fact that a stranger carrying a gripsack has called upon
Captain Woodbury. Who shall I be? A man from Cuba on business? As you
say, Miss Woodbury, I guess I’d better not come back to life again,
publicly--though I think it hard that they can’t forgive a fellow after
all these years.”
“The way of the transgressor _is_ hard, Tom Cheever,” said the old
lady, “and I don’t believe that you’ve done a straight thing since you
were born. What’s brought you back to Oldbury?”
“The schooner _Tempest_.”
“What motive brought you here?”
“Love of my native land and my kinsfolk, of course,” answered Cheever,
with his peculiar smile. “To be sure, I have not had a very hearty
welcome, you’ve treated me as if I was a cross between a ghost and a
burglar, but I didn’t expect anything better.”
“How long will your ship be in port?” asked the Captain, feeling that
the female head of the house should not do all the questioning.
“Blessed if I know,” replied Cheever, pushing his chair back from the
table and putting one leg over the other. “I worked my passage in the
schooner to get back here. I tell you, when a man has been banged
round from pillar to post, the way I’ve been, it knocks the stuffing
out of him. I’ve brought everything I have in the world with me in
that bag out in the hall. Everything, that is, but my parrot, which I
left aboard ship. Did you build this house, Woodbury? It’s a pretty
comfortable one. You must have coined money while I’ve been a-rolling
around the world, gathering no moss, except what’s in the bag.”
“What do you propose doing?” asked the Captain, his forehead
contracting into an anxious frown.
“Perhaps I’d better go up to that empty grave yonder and put myself
into it, Woodbury,” remarked Cheever, tipping his chair back and
looking about the room. “The best of us before long will use only six
foot of ground, but it’s hard work killing time until that blessed
period of equality between prince and pauper comes round.”
“Do you wish any assistance from me?” asked Woodbury.
“I don’t wish any assistance; I only wish what is due me. I wish half
my father’s estate; it’s my right. How much did he leave?”
“Not enough to quarrel about, Thomas, if we were disposed to do so,”
answered the Captain. “A few thousand dollars.”
“A few thousand dollars! Hear the man talk. Why, that’s a fortune to a
man of brains.”
“Do not trouble your mind about that, Thomas,” said the Captain, “you
shall have your fair share of that.”
“How long do you suppose it will last you?” queried Miss Woodbury, not
pleased at having been shut out from the conversation.
“I haven’t entered into any calculations as to that,” answered Cheever,
“and I don’t know as it would be any business of yours if I had. What’s
mine’s mine, even if I have got a tombstone over me.”
“Your father left a will,” continued the Captain, “leaving all his
property to my boy, but as he supposed you dead when he did so, I think
that you should have your share by fair rights.”
“Of course I should. I ask only what’s right. And when you give me the
cash, I won’t trouble you here much in this town. It’s a stupid old
place at best, and I’m afraid that somebody will recognize me. I can
disguise my face, but this cursed stutter of mine would show who I am,
I’m afraid. I guess they’d have mighty hard work though in proving
I was Tom Cheever, even if they could prove that Tom Cheever ever
did anything he hadn’t ought to. This stutter would be a strong fact
against me, but that tombstone up there is a poser on t’other, ain’t
it? Guess I’ll keep rather shady! Is the Deacon alive?”
“The Deacon is very much alive,” answered Miss Woodbury, who wished to
make Oldbury as uncomfortable a residence as possible for the man; “and
it’s my opinion that he would know you the minute he saw you, and have
you taken up the next. I wonder you dared to come back here.”
Cheever looked at her with his flitting, hunted eyes, and thinking that
the conversation was growing unpleasant, changed the subject.
“You will not mind my smoking a cigar?” he asked, drawing from his
pocket a black Regalia.
“I certainly do object to your smoking in the house,” said Miss
Woodbury. “You may go out doors and poison the air if you choose.”
“All right,” answered Tom, drawing up his tall body from the chair;
“the Captain and I will talk over our business matters.”
The poor Captain had been very quiet during all this time, but he had
been doing a deal of thinking. He saw that the disgrace which had been
brought upon his wife’s family by the man, now forgotten, would again
settle upon his household, should the fact of Cheever’s reappearance be
known to the neighbors. He felt that he would make any sacrifice to get
the man away from Oldbury. He could not help wishing that the record of
his death upon the tombstone were true. While he felt sure that any sum
he might give the man, as his share of his father’s estate, would be
soon spent by him, and that he would be demanding more, he made up his
mind that he would settle accounts with him and get him away as quickly
as he could.
Cheever’s return, besides its natural depressing effect, also awakened
the fear, which had more than once arisen in the Captain’s mind, that
some of his wicked blood might be in his son’s veins. He could not bear
to think that his boy should be exposed, even for a moment, to the
man’s contaminating influence. If he could get Cheever out of the house
at once, he would be satisfied, but how was it to be done? It would
take some time to get the ready money necessary to pay him the half of
his father’s estate to which he was entitled, since the building of
the new house had reduced the Captain’s cash on hand, and the Cheever
estate, which he held for his son, was invested in real property. He
might have to sell some part of one of his ships to get the money
necessary to pay Cheever, and this would take time.
The two men were standing upon the back veranda of the house, Cheever
calmly lighting his cigar with a flint and steel. The last glow of the
sun in the west had died away, and the stars were beginning to twinkle
in their soft summer radiance.
“I tell you what, it seems good to smell the garden again,” remarked
Cheever, “after having tossed around in the Atlantic for the last
month. What was the exact sum the old gentleman left?” he inquired,
turning sharply on his heel after this slight tribute to the beauties
of nature.
“His house and furniture and library. The whole was appraised at
about four thousand dollars. I still hold it for the boy; he is to be
educated for the ministry.”
“The hell you say,” ejaculated Cheever. “He looks much as I did when I
was a boy, and the old gentleman was going to make _me_ a parson.” He
laughed a loud, discordant laugh, and the point of his cigar described
wild curves in the darkness as his hand vibrated in the air.
The Captain’s heart gave a convulsive throb. Did this man read his
fears? He clenched his fist, and raised his arm as if to strike him;
he looked upon him as a serpent, whom he would like to grind under his
heel.
“We will not discuss the boy, Cheever,” said the Captain, sternly, when
he had regained that mastery over self which is so much more difficult
to gain than taking a city. “Five thousand dollars is more than the
whole estate is worth. I think you can trust my word.”
“You’re right, Captain,” answered Cheever, good-humoredly. “You’ve
always been so devilish honest that I didn’t expect much to see you
worth a penny when I returned to Oldbury. I never knew you to tell a
lie.”
The Captain did not think it necessary to explain to Cheever that
honest endeavor only brings lasting wealth, an opportunity, which under
other circumstances he would never have let escape, for he was fond of
hearing himself talk, and of dropping little conversational tracts, as
he met his fellow-men; but he looked at Cheever as a mere reptile upon
whom all moral truths would be wasted.
“I will give you three thousand dollars as soon as I can get the
money,” continued Woodbury, “and I shall expect you on receiving this
to give me, as executor of your father’s estate, a receipt in full and
to leave town immediately; and you will pardon me if I say that I hope
we shall never lay eyes upon you again.”
“You’re not polite, brother-in-law,” said Cheever after a pause, when
it may be presumed that even his scarred and withered heart ached,
for a man must get very low before he loses desire to be liked by his
fellow-man. “I will agree to your proposition--but, my God, Woodbury,
can’t you say a kind word to me--I’ve been pretty bad, I grant, but
I’ve not had a decent word from a decent person since I left this town
thirteen years ago.”
If the thought of his boy had not filled the Captain’s mind, he might
have relented and have spoken some words of comfort to the wretched
fellow; but the bare idea that the sins which had poisoned this man’s
life might be in his lad’s blood, made him as hard as flint.
“I am not your judge, Tom Cheever; it is well I am not, for it would
fare hard with you. Such men as you should be blotted from the earth.
Even to the third and fourth generation you cause evil to be in the
world instead of good.”
“I ought to be up there on the hill, I know,” said Cheever,
pathetically. “What was it in me that made me bad from boyhood? God
knows I was trained carefully enough, I was watched and prayed for as
you watch and pray for your son.”
The Captain started back, and his hand sought his heart and pulled
convulsively at the ruffle of his shirt. “I had brains enough,”
continued Cheever, bitterly; “I could stand at the head of my class
at school when I was a mind to,--Mr. Dillaway said I was the best and
worst scholar he ever had,--but I had to run away to keep out of State
Prison before I was twenty-one years old. It has seemed to me that I
couldn’t help it; that the wickedness was born in me. It’s no excuse,
I know, but, Woodbury, I have had an awful life. You remember Crœsus
couldn’t touch anything without its turning to gold.”
The Captain had never heard of Crœsus, and was listening to Cheever
with dull ears.
“I can’t touch gold without its turning to dross. My life never met
another’s without bringing misfortune. I’ll get out of the way,
Woodbury. I’ll go back to the schooner to-night. You can send any part
of the money you wish to Mr. Marks--that’s me. I’ll never trouble you
again.”
Saying this, Cheever held out his hand to the Captain, who did not
refuse to take it.
“Good-by, Woodbury, your sister won’t have her lavendered sheets
disturbed by me; say good-by to the boy for me, and have an eye on him.
Remember, send the money to Mr. Marks, Schooner _Tempest_. I’ll not
trouble you again.”
He shook the Captain’s hand, threw his cigar into the grass, where the
Captain still saw it shining, as he heard the front door slam.
Miss Woodbury put her head out of the dining-room window and asked in a
hoarse whisper, “Who went out then?”
“He did,” answered the Captain, “and he says he will not trouble us
again.”
“Pray God he may not, but bad pennies always return,” replied the
sceptical spinster.
The Captain walked slowly up to his den, and opening one of the
lockers, took from a faded velvet case a miniature. He saw the face of
a handsome boy, it might have been the portrait of his son. The curling
hair, the eyes, the pleasant but irresolute mouth, were all his, and
on the brown paper back, in the Rev. Mr. Cheever’s quaintly formed
handwriting, were the words, “Thomas Cheever, 1789, ætatis suæ XIV.”
The old man groaned as he looked at the “counterfeit presentment” of
the boy, who would better never been born.