James was called home to Oldbury by the news that his father was ill.
The fickle New England spring had succeeded the rigorous winter, and
the Captain had been wooed out of doors without his great-coat on a
fine May morning. A sudden change of the wind to the eastward had
chilled him through before he could get back to his house. As a result
of this exposure, he was taken down with a severe attack of congestion
of the lungs, and Miss Woodbury, being much alarmed at his condition,
sent at once for his son. It was a journey of fear and sickening
anticipation for the poor lad, but before he reached Oldbury his
father’s condition had changed for the better, and when James came to
the old man’s bedside the disease was spent. The boy was allowed to see
his father for a moment, and then hurried from the room by the doctor.
He was not to see that kind old face for many a day.
Aunt Elizabeth accepted her brother’s illness as a special mark
of Divine displeasure at the manifold shortcomings of the family,
the State, and the Nation, but she bore up wonderfully under the
affliction. Now that the danger was over, she was secretly delighted in
the chance given her to wear herself out in nursing and watching.
Our New England women are always at their best when Fate has pulled the
man of the house down by the heels and he lies propped up in bed, a
meek receptacle for gruels and doses.
“Your father was very ill indeed, James,” she said to her nephew when
he came out of the sick-room; “I thought that he was going off in the
same way his great-uncle Abraham did. He was very feverish, and he
complained of a weight upon his chest. Before the doctor came I gave
him some whiskey and water and put him to bed. I saved his life, I
think.”
“I’ve no doubt you did, Aunt Elizabeth. You are a wonderful nurse!”
“The nurses save more lives than the doctors destroy, James,” rejoined
his aunt, in a triumphant tone. “Now come to tea; I have some Sally
Lund cake. But now that you are a man at college I suppose that you
despise such things.”
James’ anxiety about his father had driven from his mind the promise
which he had made to his uncle to restore the buried silver; but
now that he was relieved from the weight of apprehension, the
responsibility of his foolish promise began to weigh upon him.
All through tea he was laying out his plan of campaign. Under cover
of the night he could dig up the silver, and then take it to his room
and polish it up. The next night he could return it to the Deacon’s
sideboard.
After the evening meal was over he went into the sitting-room which
commanded a view of the Deacon’s lilac-bush and dining-room window. He
took out the dirty plan which his uncle had given him and looked up on
it the probable burial-place of the silver.
There was a dash of romance in the adventure which stirred his blood
mightily. The digging up of buried treasure suggested tales of Captain
Kidd and Blackbeard, and a dirty map, indicating the burial-place, was
always bequeathed by dying pirates to their favorites.
It was not at all unlikely that his uncle had seen as stirring things
as had ever Captain Kidd. Was he not a licensed corsair? At that moment
he might be capturing some rich argosy on the high seas.
But after the treasure was dug up, the romance seemed to evaporate from
the prospective adventure.
It was no easy matter to restore the tankards and spoons to their old
places on the sideboard--and they must be cleaned too.
After sixteen years’ burial, much elbow-grease and white powder would
be needed.
Oldbury people went to bed early--modern life has taken all the
witchery out of midnight, and the ghosts of to-day have no unmolested
hours for exercise; but our grandfathers believed in Poor Richard’s
maxims, and were all snugly in bed by nine o’clock.
James, at that hour, was stealing from the woodshed back of his house,
with a pickaxe and spade. There was no light in the Deacon’s house, and
the night was dark enough for any evil deed.
He began digging at a short distance from the lilac-bush, keeping a
shrewd watch all the time. The soft loam yielded readily to the spade,
and it soon struck against a hard substance. It proved to be a solid
tankard encrusted with soil. He dug rapidly, unearthing at nearly every
spadeful some piece of the stolen plate, until he had completed his
uncle’s list given him with the map. And sorry enough looking was the
treasure after its long hiding.
The boy whipped off his coat and tied the silver up in it. Then he
shovelled back the dirt, placing the turf over the gash in the lawn.
His uncle’s secret had descended to him, and he had the weight of this
old sin upon him.
He sped over to the woodshed with it, put away his tools, then up to
his room with the silver. He threw this bundle upon the bed and lit his
candle. It was quick work to scrape the dirt from the silver and wash
it. The tankards were heavy and fine, one with a cipher and the other
with some coat-of-arms, and the silver service and spoons bore the
crest of the same heraldic device. The silver was tarnished, of course,
but the white powder, abstracted from his aunt’s pantry, soon made it
look respectable enough. Then he wrapped each article up in a piece of
paper and stored the whole away in a carpet-bag, which he put upon a
shelf in his closet.
“The old family skeleton is in its right place,” he thought, as he
locked the door. Then he went to his chamber window and looked out
into the night. All was still save for the wind sighing through the
pine-trees back of the house. He must enter the Deacon’s home on the
next night and restore the skeleton. How was it to be done?
The door into the Deacon’s back kitchen was fastened with a bolt.
Hannah, the maid of all work, went to prayer-meeting in the afternoon
and the kitchen was easy of access. Could he not in her absence unscrew
the washer and file off the screws, so that it would be easy to open
the door by lifting the latch and shoving hard?
In a few minutes he could creep into the dining-room, place the silver
upon the buffet, and retire, as innocent a house-breaker as ever lived.
It was an adventure not without risk, but it was a duty he owed his
family, he thought, to make this restitution, and then too, he had
promised his uncle that he would do it.
Now that he had the silver actually in hand, the risk seemed to him to
be great. How could he account for having possession of it should it
be found upon him? And, oh, awful thought! what if he should be caught
with it after he had broken into the house!
He undressed slowly as he pondered this problem, and he went to bed to
dream that the tankards were upon his heart, slowly growing in weight
until they bade fair to crush out his life. He awoke with a start from
this nightmare to greet a new dawn of a day which he wished would be
forty-eight hours long. How quickly the sun seemed to him to speed over
the heavens, to bring all too soon the darkness under which he and
other thieves must work!
In the afternoon he saw Hannah Lang, the maid of all work, leave the
Deacon’s kitchen, decorously attired for the Thursday prayer-meeting.
She would be absent an hour. As she passed from his vision, he took out
a file and screw-driver from his pocket. The kitchen door was shut, but
not locked, and the coast was clear. It did not take long to remove the
screws, take out their fangs, if I may be allowed the expression, and
replace them, so that the washer hung by a thread or two.
A breach was ready in the enemy’s wall when he chose to enter by it.
There was nothing for him to do, except to wait until dark. So far,
all had gone well, and well begun was half done. His reflections were
interrupted by his aunt’s voice.
“Your father is sleeping,” she said in the whisper adopted by women
in houses where some one is ill. “Sleeping like a child. Dear me! what
an anxious time I have had. Poor John, he never could take any care of
himself. At his age too,--why he is ten years older than my father was
when he died and every one called him ‘Old Squire Woodbury.’ Perhaps
they call me an old woman too.”
“I never heard any one say anything so impolite,” said James.
“I am old, my dear boy, and that is a fault that time does not cure.
Life slips away. Yes, I am an old woman, James. You know that I was
in Boston making a visit, a young girl of seventeen, when the city
was seized by General Washington’s army. I was staying with old Aunt
Barrett. She went with the other Tories to Halifax when the British
evacuated the town. I was caught by the siege and stayed with her till
she went on board the king’s ship, and then Brother John, who was in
one of the regiments outside, took care of me when the Americans took
the town.”
“Then you remember the battle of Bunker Hill, Aunt Elizabeth?”
“Remember it, James; it is a day I never shall forget in this world.”
The days of the siege in Boston had been the happiest of her life. A
patriot maid she was, in the midst of the enemies of her country, but
love laughs at political opinions as well as at locksmiths. In the
merry-makings and theatricals with which the British garrison whiled
away the long winter, Aunt Elizabeth’s love-story began, and it ended
on the 17th of June. Lieutenant Pennington was leading his men up
Breed’s Hill as carelessly as if he were walking down Bond Street,
twirling the tassel of his sword as he marched. The raw American
Militia were despised by the trained soldiers. He fell at the first
volley, and love was done for Elizabeth Woodbury. The poor old maid’s
withered face lighted up at the memory of those halcyon days. The
tragic ending made the romance the dearer and more sacred to her. She
quietly left the room; and if her secret were told, who knows but that
the miniature was taken from its resting-place, amid the faded finery
of her girlhood?
X
James had been forbidden the Fairbanks’ house by the Deacon ever since
the night of his uncle’s escape. Captain Woodbury saw the Deacon only
when he went to pay the interest upon the mortgage on his house. The
money was passed and a receipt given in return for it. Neither spoke to
the other.
The Deacon had published far and wide through the town the news of
Cheever’s return, and he had not forgotten to mention the crowning
misdeed of the reprobate’s Oldbury career,--the theft of the plate. He
was loud in his abuse of James for aiding in the escape, and it was his
wont to declare that the boy was a chip off the old block.
The towns-people had pretty well forgotten the black sheep; but now his
tombstone became the Mecca of mischievous pilgrims; and its blue slate
was often marred by derisive scrawls.
The Captain refused to remove the stone, and had it carefully restored
whenever the mischief-makers marred it.
He hoped by this passive resistance to combat the reports that Cheever
was not dead--but the towns-people believed in the return of the
escaped burglar, and tongues wagged hourly over the stories of the
minister’s son. The many good deeds of the father, his forty years
of Christian ministry, had been forgotten long ago, except by a few
survivors of his congregation, but the evil-doings of the son were now
green in the memories of all.
He had as completely verified the New England prophecies that a
minister’s son will turn out badly as did the second Increase Mather,
who nearly broke his excellent father’s heart.
James’ part in the escape had connected him in the public mind with the
robber uncle, and when he went away to Cambridge, heads were wagged
at church and prayer-meeting over the danger which the Captain ran in
letting his son go out of his control. Young Devereux’s accounts of his
room-mate’s idle life had not benefited the boy’s reputation; and now
he was considered by all in town to be a very bad young man. His nine
months at college had been spent harmlessly, if idly, but the Oldbury
people looked upon him as a kind of a Sardanapalus. It was known
that his father intended him for the ministry, and it seemed to the
straight-laced almost a blasphemy to connect James Cheever with the
Congregational Church.
James was unaware of his bad reputation, and of the malicious tongues
which were every day adding to it; for he had not been in Oldbury
since he had first left the town to go to college and he had not seen
Alice and her mother during this period. He felt little like meeting
them, while their ancestral silver was concealed in his chamber; for
the innocent possession of the plate made him feel guilty. From the
repository of the stolen goods, he watched the Deacon’s home through
the afternoon, and he was finally rewarded by seeing Alice trip down
the front path to High Street. A year had made her a young woman. There
is a great difference between sixteen and seventeen. James fancied
that she shot a demure glance at his window, for she certainly knew he
had come back from college.
James had written to her after his departure to college, and she had
answered telling him of her grandfather’s order that she should have
nothing to do with him, and had expressed her regrets. Then came the
stories of his wild life at the college, stories which she did not
believe; but which every one in the town seemed to credit.
The Deacon, who was intimate with Dr. Devereux, the good boy’s father,
had the stories fresh and fresh every week; and duly, in his morning
prayers, he requested that the youth of Oldbury should be kept clear
from the contamination involved in association with this black sheep.
He was not so urgent in his prayers that the wicked should be brought
back to repentance; for that would interfere with his idea of the
fitness of things, and after all, terrible examples were as necessary
for the young strugglers over the straight path as were sign-posts to
travellers.
Each one of James’ sins was incorporated into the family devotions,
catalogued like obstructions to navigation, and marked to be avoided.
Slothfulness, drunkenness, gambling, were the least of these.
But still the young sinner was right when he imagined that the girl
looked up at his window as she walked down the path, and she was
rewarded by a glimpse of his face. His heart gave a great bound and he
started to run down the stairs to join her. But he stopped himself. It
would be better to wait until the silver had been returned. Then for
the first time it occurred to him that its return might be associated
in the Deacon’s mind with his coming back to the town. That would be
awkward, but what if it was? He had promised his uncle, and he might
as well carry out the promise now. He could not leave the silver in his
room and return to Cambridge. He was in for the adventure and must see
it through.
And so he seated himself by the window and watched until Alice returned
from her walk. She did not look up at the window this time. Was she
provoked because he had not joined her? How could she be, when she had
written him that she could not see him? Still, he would have followed
her, if it had not been for the silver in the closet. But Alice, of
course, knew nothing of that; and like any true woman, she had not
expected her sweetheart to be so little adventurous. She was forbidden
to meet him, but he was not forbidden to meet her, and if he sought her
company, how could she run away from him as if he were a pestilence?
His conduct, she thought, was worse than any of the gossips had made it
out. He was inconstant and cowardly, and he ought to have known that it
was her pen only that wrote the letter to him--not her heart. “Boys are
so stupid,” she thought, as she opened the front door. “If I were a man
and a girl had a thousand grandfathers, and each one of them forbade my
seeing her, I should not mind.”
Ah, Uncle Tom, your fatal booty did not finish its evil work when it
forced you from your father’s home and from the only woman who ever
loved you.
The sun coursed over the heavens; the shadows began to fall. James ate
his supper with his aunt in silence, and again sought his chamber.
Indeed, he dreaded lest, during his absence from it, some one should
find the silver.
He watched the light in the Deacon’s sitting-room, and it seemed an age
before it went out and the bedroom lights were lighted and darkened in
their turn. The church bells tolled the hours, at the infinite spaces
of time apart at which they reverberate to a man tossing in a sleepless
bed.
He had chosen midnight as the best hour for house-breaking, and
finally the cracked bell of the meeting-house, where his grandfather
had preached all his life, reluctantly struck out the hour. At the
last stroke, he put on a broad-brimmed hat, wound a tippet several
times around the lower part of his face, so that he could not be
recognized,--and took up his heavy carpet-bag.
The house was still, but his father might be awake in his sick-room.
He crawled down-stairs stealthily. It seemed to him that he did not
make a sound, and that he was a clever apprentice at the black art of
burglary. The back door of the Deacon’s house opened readily as he
leaned against it, but he was startled at the noise which the washer
made as it fell upon the floor. He waited for some minutes to discover
whether the noise of this accident had started any of the sleepers
in the house, but there was not a sound to be heard--except the loud
ticking of the kitchen clock. It was not a dark night, although it was
moonless, and he could see well enough to pick his way through the
kitchen through the entry to the dining-room. Over this same path had
his uncle gone when he went to steal the silver.
The dining-room was soon gained. It was a solemn place at that hour
of the night. The Deacon’s great arm-chair at the head of the table
seemed a personification of the stern old man who occupied it three
times every day. High-backed and grim it stood at the head of the dark
dining-table, like a cheerless host presiding at funeral baked meats.
[Illustration: “JAMES TURNED AS HE HEARD THE NOISE.”]
After his first tremor at this whimsical resemblance, James
proceeded to his work. He opened the carpet-bag, and was hurriedly
placing the silver piece by piece upon the sideboard, when the door
opened, and there stood the Deacon, a candle in one hand, a pistol in
the other--a more grim-looking figure than the old man, in his long
white night-gown and high night-cap, cannot be imagined. James turned
as he heard the noise, and stood still for a moment in terror at the
dreadful apparition.
The Deacon said never a word, but, raising his pistol, fired--and
James, not knowing whether he was hit or not, hurled the heavy tankard
which he held in his hand straight at the old man’s head.
The boy’s aim was truer than the man’s; for the bullet crashed
harmlessly into the sideboard, while the tankard struck the Deacon
upon the forehead and he fell heavily upon the floor, the pistol and
candlestick dropping from his grasp as he fell.
There was the sound of hurrying feet in the chambers overhead, and
James, not stopping to see what had happened, fled like a deer to the
kitchen, out the door into the yard, and over the hill towards the
Boston road.
As James rushed from the dining-room, Alice and her mother ran down the
stair-way. By the time they reached the bottom, all was quiet in the
dark room beyond.
They heard the rush of hurrying feet in the passageway leading to the
kitchen. The two women stood clutching each other, not daring to enter
the room. Then they heard an uneasy stir and a heavy groan from the
dining-room. Mrs. Pickering, forgetting the darkness and the danger,
ran into the room and her feet stumbled over her father’s prostrate
form.
“Father! father! They have killed him--You have killed him, whoever you
are!” she cried to the thief, whom she imagined to be hiding in the
corner.
Alice hastened to her mother. “Where is he, mother?”
“Strike at light, child. They will not murder two women, the cowards.”
Alice ran back to the hall table where the bedroom candles were kept,
and lighted one. The old man stirred again and tried to raise himself
from the floor.
“He’s not dead, mother!” said Alice. “Was he shot?”
“I cannot tell; he has a cut on his forehead.” Alice caught sight of
the pistol and picked it up. “We heard only one shot and grandfather’s
pistol was fired. He must have been struck by the burglar--”
Her eye caught sight of the tankard, which had rolled under the table.
“By this tankard,” she exclaimed.
“Where did it come from? We have none like it, and see, the sideboard
is covered with silver that doesn’t belong to us.”
Mrs. Pickering glanced quickly at the tankard and recognized it at
once. She had her father’s head on her knee and was wiping the blood
from his forehead.
“Get some water, Alice,” she said. “He’s not dead. He will come to in a
minute.”
“But the burglars?” inquired Alice.
“They will not harm us. They are far away by this time.”
Alice brought the water and a napkin, and her mother bathed the
contusion. The old man presently opened his eyes and called out: “Stop
there, you thief--Is he dead? Did I kill him? What’s the matter,
Mary? Why am I here? Oh, I remember the burglar. He stood there by the
sideboard robbing the silver. I never expected to get a shot at him.
It was he. I recognized him, your old lover, Mary, that wretched Tom
Cheever. You start, eh! ’Twas he, girl, I swear; I shall follow him
till he is in jail, in spite of his father, the minister. I don’t care
for him, not I.”
He was quiet after this outbreak and seemed to grow unconscious again.
“Can we two women get him to his bed? Call to the maid, Alice.”
“She will never come, mother; she’s such a coward, and her head must be
deep under the bedclothes.”
“Perhaps I can arouse him--put his great-coat around him, dear, and I
will bathe his head--poor father! it was a cruel blow. Go up-stairs,
Alice, and send the maid down.”
“I shall go and arouse James Woodbury, mamma. He’s at home.”
“Yes, I know that he’s at home,” said Mrs. Pickering, shortly. “Call to
him.”
“It will disturb his father,” said Alice, remembering for the first
time her scanty costume. “I shall go and wake up Hannah.” Lighting
another candle, she sped up to the maid’s room and tried the knob. The
door was locked; there was not a sound heard from within.
“Hannah!” she called.
Still there was no sound.
“Hannah!” she called again, “there have been thieves in the house!”
“Lord a-massy me!” came in a feeble treble from within. The voice was
muffled as if from under many blankets.
“They have half killed poor grandfather.”
“Land sakes alive!”
“But they have gone now, and you must come down and help us to get him
back to bed, and go with me for the doctor.”
“I never could do such a thing and thieves in the house.”
“They are not in the house, Hannah, I tell you! You must come--I do not
see how you can be such a coward.”
Alice went to her bedroom and put on her wrapper, and brought her
mother’s down-stairs to her.
And soon Hannah came down the stairs, jumping at every shadow, and
almost sick with terror. When she saw the Deacon lying upon the floor,
with a bleeding wound upon his forehead, she gave a loud scream, and
sank upon the stair-way in a swoon.
The Deacon happened at that minute to come to, and he immediately
jumped to his feet; for, after all, his wounds, like Jack’s, gained
in his tumble with Gill, were of the kind which could be mended with
“vinegar and brown paper.” The concussion had deprived him of his
senses for a few minutes, and he had now only a bruise and a headache.
He looked for a while at the two women, then over to the sideboard.
“The silver! all the stolen silver returned! what does it mean?”
“You had better come up to bed; you will catch cold, father,” urged his
daughter, pulling at his sleeve.
He broke away from her, and he saw the tankard which had broken his
head.
“Uncle Dudley’s tankard! Why, Tom Cheever stole it--I fired at the
burglar to-night--Yes, there is the bullet-hole in the sideboard,
and all of the silver returned, every bit of it; the two tankards,
the bowl, the forks and spoons. This is a great mystery, a special
providence.”
“Come to bed, father,” urged Mrs. Pickering.
“I feel a draught from the passage,” he replied; “the thief must have
entered and escaped by that way.” Taking up a candle, he went upon the
trail through the open doors. “He made his entrance through the kitchen
door,” he announced. “Hannah must have left it unlocked. No; he forced
his entrance--I do not see how he could have done it without making a
noise which would wake the dead.”
The Deacon pulled a dresser against the disabled door and returned to
the dining-room. Hannah by this time had recovered from her swoon, and
partially recovered from her terror. The difference between having a
live protector in the house and the body of a murdered man, restored
her to her senses.
“Now, all you women, go up to bed,” said the Deacon, when he had
barricaded his castle. “There’s some way of explaining this night’s
work, and I think that if anybody can see through a millstone when
there’s a hole in it, I can.”
The women did as they were bid, and the Deacon packed the newly
recovered treasures into a basket and brought it to his room and put it
in the closet.
But the Deacon’s wounded head was aching so shrewdly that he was not in
a benign frame of mind. The silver had come back, but the man who had
brought it had done its owner evil.
“It must be some of that Cheever brood,” ejaculated the old man, as he
blew out the candle and laid his aching head upon the pillow. “Nephew
or uncle, I don’t know which--Satan’s brood, in either event. The boy
is in town to see his sick father, so he had the opportunity.” And he
lay through the watches of the night puzzling over the mystery and
making plans for the righteous punishment of poor James.