James, after having been told to leave the dining-room by his father,
waited anxiously around the front doorsteps of the house, plucking the
long tassels of grass, and biting off the sweet green ends. He had
heard during his boyhood but little of his mother’s only brother, and
when he had asked about him, had been told that he had died many years
before, and that he had been very unfortunate. He was perhaps the only
boy in the town who had not heard the whole story of Parson Cheever’s
scapegrace son: of his idle youth and his suspected complicity in a
robbery, of his escape, his adventures in the Caribbean Sea, and his
murder in La Guayra.
Of such a picturesque character, especially when the son of the
minister of the church, many a story was handed down, but his nephew
knew only that his dead uncle was wicked, and that the least said about
him the better it would be. His return to life was as exciting to James
as would be the apparition of William Tell to a Swiss peasant.
As James sat wondering what his elders were saying in the dining-room,
his uncle, bolting from the front hall with his gripsack, stumbled
over him and fell down the granite steps, alighting in a heap upon
the smooth gravel path below. James looked at the front door rather
apprehensively, as if he expected to see his father’s stalwart leg
reaching over the threshold as the motive power which had driven the
man from the door; but he saw only blackness, and heard his father
answering his aunt at the other side of the house.
Cheever picked himself up from the gravel path and tried to pull
himself together after his fall.
“What in the name of all that is unholy did I fall over?” he asked,
rubbing his shin, which the sharp edge of the granite step had barked.
“Over me,” replied James, he too rubbing his shoulder, where his uncle
had hit him. “Where were you going so fast?”
“Down to the schooner. I’m off.”
“Your schooner isn’t to sail right away, is she?”
“No, but I’m going back on board. I am mate and have to look after her.”
“Shan’t you stay here with us?” asked the boy, who felt it to be most
inhospitable that a long-lost uncle should thus be almost driven from
his father’s gates.
“No, James, no. I’m not coming back here again. I don’t like to be
where I am not wanted, you know.”
He smiled, as he thought that he was rather more urgently wanted
at Oldbury than he could desire. Looking down the road, he saw the
well-remembered elm-trees in front of Deacon Fairbank’s house,
beneath which he used to meet Sally Fairbanks years ago. So Sally was
a widow,--Joshua Pickering’s widow. He wondered how she could have
married stupid Josh Pickering, who was the butt of all the brighter
boys and girls at school.
“Do you ever see the Widow Pickering, James?” he asked, as he stood
looking at the dark masses of the elm-trees.
James blushed. Was not the Widow Pickering’s daughter, Alice, the girl
of his heart? The widow too, had she not always marked him out from all
the other boys as her favorite? He did not think it necessary to tell
his uncle of his consuming passion for Alice, and simply answered that
he often saw the widow.
“Well--tell her--” stuttered Cheever. “Well, no, never mind--Don’t you
tell her I’ve come back. It wouldn’t do--there mustn’t anybody know it,
do you understand, or I shall get into trouble. Promise you won’t tell
any one.”
“I shall not tell, sir,” promised James.
Cheever hesitated for a minute, and then, taking a small packet from
an inner pocket of his waistcoat, said, “When you see the widow, boy,
you might give her this box and tell her that a sailor, a rough sort
of a fellow you saw on a ship in the harbor when you was knocking wind
in your boat, asked you to give it to her. You can say that he said
that Tom Cheever gave it to him down in La Guayra years ago when he was
dying, to be given to Miss Sarah Fairbanks of Oldbury, Massachusetts,
if he ever should get there. Tell her, too, that the ship has sailed
and that you don’t know anything more about it than this. You’ll do
this, will you, James?”
“I will if you wish me to, but it won’t be true; you’re not dead.”
“Yes, I am dead; Tom Cheever is dead. My name’s Marks,--Tom Marks.
It would be hard to say which was the most worthless of the two. The
thing in the box rightly belongs to the widow. And you might say to
her, James, that the sailor said that Cheever wished him to ask her to
forgive him and to pray for him. I guess that’s all, James. Good-by,
boy. Now, I’ve got a word to say to you. You do what your father tells
you to; don’t think you know it all. Be a credit to your family. You
don’t want to grow up and have folks thank God when you die, and wish
you dead when you are alive--and feel yourself that they are right.”
James reached out for the packet which Cheever handed to him and placed
his hand upon his shoulder for a minute.
“Good-by, James, good-by,” he said, and plunged off into the darkness,
and the boy saw him no more.
James stood holding the packet in his hand, confused by the remarkable
events of the evening. He felt strangely drawn to the man who had
just left, and at the same time an undefined instinct told him that
he should shun him. What bond of any kind could there be between the
Widow Pickering, with her calm face and dignified bearing, and his
uncle? Could he have loved her years ago as his nephew now loved Alice?
Not that it was really possible, he thought, that any one could love
another as he loved Alice. To be sure, he was only fifteen years old,
and of course could not marry for some years, but he felt that the
world would be a cheerless place if his Alice were not in it.
We all laugh at calf-love, and smile when we see a youngster a willing
slave at the beck and call of a maiden in her teens; but do you suppose
that your battered old heart, under your expanding waistcoat, can leap
with the fervor of a boy’s? It is pure gold, with no alloy of passion
or worldliness, which a youth offers to his mistress; no depreciated
currency tattered and frayed by handling.
An artist, painting Love’s Young Dream, does not show as his model
a worldly pair, with thoughts of domestic economy and of marriage
portions clouding their brows; nor would the poets sing the love of a
middle-aged Corydon with a Phyllis who had gathered scalps in countless
ballrooms and watering-places.
A young philosopher of my acquaintance of the age of nine, on being
reproved by his mother for his excessive devotion to a little girl, hit
upon the weak point in youthful love-affairs, when he replied, “Dear
mamma, do not be at all alarmed about this; I cannot be married until
I am twenty-four, and no man ever loved the same woman for fifteen
years.” But when this distressful and unromantic century was in its
infancy, children were not cynical philosophers, and marriages were
made early. Young men boldly took the risks of life and gave hostages
to fortune, and happy homes were conducted on incomes which would at
the present day barely suffice for the wife’s dressmaker’s or the
husband’s cigar bills. But even in that primitive state of society, I
suppose that few married their first loves. James, not being versed
in the fickleness of the human heart and the many obstacles which
proverbially roughen the course of true love, never doubted that his
love was genuine and would be lasting. Had he not for years walked home
from school with Alice, carrying her books; had he not always buckled
on her skates and steered her down the icy hills on his red sled, “The
Flying Dutchman”? And with great pains had he not cut in two a silver
six-pence, half of which each wore, tied upon a blue ribbon around the
neck as near the heart as might be. It had been a great grief to him
when they had been separated from each other at school; the boy, who
was intended for college, going to the Latin School, while Alice had
to be content with the small amount of learning which was thought
necessary for our grandmothers. It is doubtful whether our modern girls
really learn more from books than their ancestresses used to, and it
is certain that of many other things they learn less. Yet it was clear
that the girl could have done the boy’s tasks better than he. His mind
was filled with thoughts of sailing down the reaches of the bay, or of
playing ball with the boys on the Common, while his eyes received but
a blurred impression of the page of the Latin Grammar before him; but
her quick mind and retentive memory would have rapidly learned what was
put before her. Indeed, she followed on in the study of Latin, unknown
to him; for she did not like to think that a book which he could
read should be sealed to her, and she had one day surprised James by
suggesting a translation for a word in the Latin Primer, over which he
had stuck for some time.
“How did you know that, Alice?” he had asked. “Pooh! you don’t know;
you are making believe.”
“I _do_ know,” said Alice. “We girls could learn ever so much quicker
than you stupid boys if they would only let us.”
“Nonsense! Alice,” replied James, looking at her with all the pride of
the superior sex. “Girls can’t learn Latin, and they ought to thank
their stars they cannot. It’s very tiresome.”
But this superior being found in due time that one girl could learn
Latin a great deal better than he could, and his wandering mind was
often kept to its task by the feeling that it would be very stupid in
him to be outstripped by a girl who had no masters to help her in her
study of the dead tongue.
As James stood looking down the street towards the dark foliage of
the Deacon’s elm-trees on the other side of the street, he felt that
it would have been well to tell his sweetheart of the wonderful event
of the evening, before facing her step-mother with the packet which
had just been given him. Alice’s superior intelligence, he thought,
would help him in the difficult task of telling a straight story. He
knew, however, that she would not be satisfied with the perversion of
the truth involved in saying that Tom Cheever was dead; to him it did
not seem so bad. Tom Cheever really was dead, so far as Oldbury was
concerned, and it certainly was right that Mrs. Pickering should get
her property back. But his uncle had made him promise not to tell any
one that he had come back; of course, he could not even tell Alice. His
unaided intelligence must steer him through the dangerous channels by
which he should convey the message and the packet to the good lady; and
he must suppress the truth in the doing it.
Stopping under the trees outside the Deacon’s house, he could see into
the sitting-room lighted by lamp and candles. Alice and her mother were
seated near the table in the middle of the room, the elder sewing at
some white garment, while Alice was reading a heavy, leather-covered
book which rested on the table, being too large to be held in her
hands. Her light brown hair was drawn smoothly over her well-shaped
head into a little roll behind, but a stray ringlet or two told that
this Puritan simplicity was not natural. Her eyes were cast down over
her book, and thus the great charm of her face was for the moment lost
behind the modest, long-fringed eyelids, the bright blue, laughing
eyes, which changed into serious deep ones as the gay thought was
succeeded by the sad one in her mind. Her cheeks were rosy with the
sweet bloom of a Northern girlhood, which, alas, too soon fades away.
Her mouth, though large, had full, beautiful curves, which bespoke an
even temperament. Her girlish form was clad in a plain brown dress. As
she read the big book on the table, her face changed with the emotions
which swept through her mind; her mouth dimpled into a smile or drew
down as if she were grieved; her forehead contracted with lines and
grew smooth again; her color came and went. One could see that she was
of an emotional, imaginative nature, one to whom the characters in
romance or history seemed actually living. Her mother had once been
a beautiful woman, and even at forty she was comely. A common-place
face hers would have been in expression, had it not been for a settled
melancholy, which gave it a character of its own.
James walked to the front door and knocked; at the first metallic ring
of the brass, Alice shut her book and ran to the door to greet him.
Even in little things, the quick ear of a girl can distinguish the
person she cares for.
“Oh, James!” she cried, “I’m so glad you have come over. Let’s sit on
the steps here, it is so much cooler than in the sitting-room. What
have you been doing all day?”
James sat beside her upon the jamb of the door, and looked at her for
a moment with great satisfaction. “I am glad to see you again, Alice,”
he answered; “I wanted to get here before, but I have been trying to
induce my father to let me go to sea.”
“Oh, James!” exclaimed Alice.
“Of course he wouldn’t hear of it! He says that I must go to college
and then be a minister. I will make a queer kind of a minister, I am
thinking.”
“Yes, you would _now_, Jamie,” laughed Alice. “But you will not be
fifteen all your life.”
“But I do not believe that a halo will begin to be apparent around my
head as I get older. In fact, if a vote of the neighborhood were taken,
I do not think that it would be voted that I had improved since I was
a little boy. I was a very good baby, and have been getting worse ever
since. Ask your grandfather, the Deacon, what he thinks of me.”
“It is too early in your life to think seriously of what you are going
to do,” answered the girl, in her sweet, low voice. “If you get a good
education, it will not do you any harm, no matter what you do in after
life.”
“Will it help me to manage a ship, to be able to read Virgil and Homer,
Alice? I tried to get the old gentleman to look at the irregular verbs
in the Latin Grammar when we were arguing about it, but he was much too
knowing for that and pointed at the reverend grandpa as an unanswerable
argument. I tell you what, Alice, the Captain has a will of his own.
I’d rather be like him than like a parson. Tom Devereux is the kind of
a fellow to work into a parson. I’m not and I never shall be.”
There was a moment’s pause. Alice looked sadly at the boy’s eager,
passionate face. Just then the little packet which his uncle had given
him fell from his hand upon the stone step.
“But, by George, Alice,” exclaimed the boy, reminded by this of the
errand upon which he had come, “something happened to-night which I
cannot tell you about.”
“Cannot tell me about!”
“No, I want to, but I promised not to--but I have a message to give
your mother and this little box. I wish I knew what was in it.”
“So do I,” said Alice, taking the packet in her hand and shaking it. “I
think it too bad that you have a secret which you will not tell me.”
“_May_ not tell you, Alice. It is too bad, for I should like your
advice about something which I must tell your mother--but I cannot. I
think that I will go in to her now so to get it off my mind. Is she
alone in there?”
“Grandfather is asleep in the next room.”
“Are you sure he is asleep, Alice?”
“He was when I came out. He had his red bandana over his face, and was
snoring peacefully.”
James walked into the room where Mrs. Pickering was still sewing.
She put her work upon the table when she saw him, and smiled at him
pleasantly.
“Good evening, James,” she said, as the boy bowed to her, and shuffled
his feet awkwardly. “You have something you wish to say to me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” answered James, rolling the packet around in the palm of
his hand. “The fact is, it is something very odd and something I cannot
understand. I was out sailing this afternoon in my boat and after I
came up to the mooring and was walking up the wharf I met a sailor who
spoke to me. After a little talk, he asked me if I knew a Miss Sally
Fairbanks--”
“What did he look like?” asked Mrs. Pickering, turning pale.
“Just a sailor, that’s all. He had a long black beard, and he was
brown, and had tar on his hands,” answered James, drawing on his
imagination unsuccessfully for a vivid picture of a seaman. He felt
that he was getting into deep water, and was impatient of questions.
“I said there was a widow lady living in town who had been a Miss Sally
Fairbanks, but who now was Mrs. Pickering, and with that he took out
this little box from his trousers’ p-p-pocket.”
The building of this picturesque circumstance was a little too much for
the boy’s invention, and his stuttering was painful.
Mrs. Pickering took the box from the boy, who kept silence while she
opened it. He was trying to form into an intelligent sentence the
message Tom Cheever, dying in La Guayra, had sent to her; but he was
so much interested to see what the box contained, that the words did
not come easily to his tongue. Mrs. Pickering cut with her scissors
the tarred string which bound the box, and slowly removed the cover. A
small wad of cotton-wool was then removed and James saw a gold ring of
an old filagree pattern. Mrs. Pickering turned pale when she saw it,
and, quickly looking at the inner part, inquired in a tremulous voice
of James:
“What did the man say when he gave this to you? Tell me all about it,
James.”
James turned red under these questions and stammered out:
“He said that a man named Tom Cheever gave it to him years ago when he
lay a-dying in a hospital in La Guayra, and told him to give it to Miss
Sally Fairbanks of Oldbury, Massachusetts, if he ever should get there
and see her--and the sailor said that the dying man said that he wished
that she would forgive him.”
The woman sat for a moment gazing fixedly at the little ring, turning
it over and over with her fingers; what remembrances it brought back
to her of shame and tears. Had she entirely lost her old love for the
reprobate? Who can say?
“He wished that I should forgive him,” she murmured to herself. “Poor
Tom!”
A tear rolled down her cheek, and James watched it intently as it
strayed down the deep line between nose and cheek, then turned away his
head.
“It is odd that the sailor should have happened to ask _you_ to bring
me this,” she said, “this relic of your uncle.”
James gave a start at the word “uncle” and was at a loss for words.
“Yes, it was queer that it should happen so,” he said; “but then you
know I am often round the wharves in the afternoon.”
“When you should be minding your books, naughty boy,” exclaimed
Mrs. Pickering, smiling through her tears; for perhaps all love
for ne’er-do-wells had not been rooted from her breast. Indeed, it
is hard to shake the shiftless and reckless from their thrones in
women’s hearts; the careless, amiable qualities which go to make them
unsuccessful in active life, endear them the more to the gentle spirits
of women.
“Yes,” answered the boy, looking down abashed upon the floor; “when
I should be minding my books, I know. Do you wish to ask me anything
more?”
“No, James,” she murmured; “I have nothing more to ask or to say. This
ring calls back a time in my life of which I care to say little to any
one, least of all to you. Good night, my boy.”
She leaned over and kissed him tenderly, as if to call blessings down
upon him, and as he left the room he saw her still turning the ring
over with her slim, white fingers, and murmuring to herself.
Of which of the two dead men who had been near to her, the scamp
Cheever or the good Joshua Pickering, was she thinking?