Belford's Magazine, Vol. II, No. 3, February 1889

IV.
TRUE LOVE

 
"The winds are fair, the sky is bright,
The sails are drawing free,
And loud I sing, my heart is light,
My loves returns to me.
 
 
To the no'nothe east and the sou'sou' west,
And every other way,
He's sailed from the girl that loved him best,
But he comes back to-day.
 
 
"Land ho!" "Land ho!"
"Land on the starboard bow!"
"Land ho!" "Land ho!"
He's in the offing now.
 
 
The nights were dark, the days were drear,
When he was on the deep,
Now night is gone, the day is clear,
And I no more shall weep.
 
 
To the no'nothe east and the sou'sou' west,
And every other way,
He's sailed from the girl that loves him best,
But he comes back to-day.
 
 
"Land ho!" "Land ho!"
"Land on the starboard bow!"
"Land ho!" "Land ho!"
He's in the offing now."
 

So sung pretty Mary Wallace, as, sitting at the foot of a little tree, her favorite haunt and old time trysting-place in the woods, she abandoned herself to happy anticipations of her lover's return. Each hour might bring him now. Her bonnet was thrown aside and her black curls rippled down loosely over her shoulders. Her head was thrown back into the palms of her hands interlocked behind it, and her beautiful face, thus upraised, beamed with innocent gladness. And she sang, as the birds sing, from sheer happiness.

"He's in the offing now," sang a full, rich, manly voice, joining hers in the last line of her song, and with a little inarticulate cry of surprise and joy she sprang to her feet, to be the next moment enfolded in the strong arms of her sailor lover, back from the sea.

Dorn Hackett was a fine-looking young fellow, of a size worthy of a woman's liking, with a handsome, expressive face, hazel eyes, brown hair, broad and well-balanced head, square shoulders, deep chest, and such powerful arms as might have served for the model of a Hercules.

"Why, darling, you are crying!" he exclaimed, as with gentle force he raised her face from his breast and looked into her eyes.

"Ah, Dorn, they are happy tears. Do you not know that a woman weeps when her heart is full, just because it is full, whether it be filled with joy or sorrow?"

"Well, you shall never cry for sorrow again, if I can prevent it."

"Then you will never again leave me for so long a time. Oh, Dorn, it seemed as if you never would come back; and my heart ached so with longing for you. You don't know how unhappy I have been sometimes, while you were away."

"Why? Has that rascal Silas been making you any more trouble?" demanded the young man, his eyes blazing, and his hands involuntarily clenching in sudden anger.

"No, no, Dorn. He went away very soon after you did, and has not returned since."

"Then that uncle of yours, I suppose – "

"He has been no worse than before; rather better, perhaps as Silas was not here to be urged upon me and you were gone – none but I knew where – and, as he no doubt hoped, never to come back. But I begin to think, sir, that you didn't love me at all as much as you professed, or you would have felt something of the loneliness that I suffered and understand better why I was unhappy."

"Darling, I – "

"What a foolish girl I have been! Crying my eyes out for one who was no doubt very merry without me and well contented."

"Ah! You only say that to make me tell you again how much I love you, little Mollie. I've felt lonely enough, sometimes, it is true; but never enough to cry about it, I must confess; and I rather think the fellow is soft-headed as well as soft-hearted who pipes his eye and gets down in the mouth when he can say to himself that every day that passes, and every new exertion he makes, brings him nearer to the girl he loves. Why, instead of getting blue with thoughts of my far-away little Mollie, they gave me courage, and strength, and happiness. They warmed me as I lay along the yard furling sail in the icy gale; they made short the long hours of the night when I took my trick at the wheel; they nerved my arm when I struck for the life of a whale."

"I find myself beginning to believe again that you really did love me."

"Love you? Why, I couldn't live without loving you."

"And you never thought that while you were so long away I might learn to love somebody else?"

"No. Never even dreamed of such a thing," he replied simply.

"Ah! Now I know you loved me, for only perfect love, knowing but its own fullness and truth, is so trustful. And you were right, dear Dorn. I could love no one but you."

"Well, my pet," continued Dorn, after the natural ceremonial of due recognition of such a sweet avowal – the form and manner of which youthful readers may readily figure to themselves, and older ones perhaps find suggested by memory – "we'll not have much longer to wait now. Our cruise was a good one, and when the shares are figured up and paid off, I'll have a handsome little sum coming to me. Then an owner in New Haven, Mr. Merriwether, wants me to take immediate command of a schooner trading between that port and the West Indies, and has offered me such a pretty share of the profits that I have agreed to make a few trips for him. Then I shall have enough to build a cage for my bird, and to buy, not simply a share in a schooner, but a whole schooner – all by myself, I hope, and we will be made folks for life."

"Oh! You're going away again, Dorn?"

"Yes, but only for short voyages of a month or so at a time, and I'll be over to see my little Mollie every time I'm in home port; and in the fall, if not before, we'll be married. No more long voyages for me."

"I'm so glad to hear you say that, dear; and I can wait patiently, even happily, when I may see you sometimes." And, possibly for happiness still, the girl began crying softly again.

"Come, come, little Mollie," said her sailor lover, consoling her with a kiss, "there's no occasion to rig the pumps in such fair weather as this."

Mary smiled through her tears, and dried her eyes.

"Now," he continued, "let me hear your voice, darling. Tell me something."

"What shall I tell you?"

"Tell me again if you still love me."

For answer she put her arm around his neck, drew his face down to hers, and kissed him. What words could have been so complete and eloquent an assurance as that chaste and tender caress?

"My own dear little wife," he exclaimed, embracing her passionately.

"Don't call me 'wife' until I am one," she said, with assumed earnestness, "for I'm told it's unlucky."

"Well, maybe it may be," he answered slowly and doubtingly. "There's no denying that there is something in luck. Every sailorman knows there are unlucky things, such as sailing on a Friday, and drowning a cat, and lots more, and that may be so. Well, I won't take any chances on it. But I've thought of you for eleven hundred days and nights as my little wife, and the words sprang naturally to my lips. Still I'll try not to call you so any more until we are married."

"And to prevent any harm from your indiscretion I suppose I must use the counter-charm."

"And that is – ?"

"To call you," and winding her arms again about his neck she whispered in his ear, "my big husband."

And then, of course, there were more suitable ceremonials, endearments and caresses, and mutual protestations of undying affection, such as young people so circumstanced have always made, make yet, and doubtless will make to the end of time.

How very short the time seemed to the lovers from the moment of their meeting until by a glance at the stars, the true sailor's clock, Dorn saw that it was near the hour for him to leave Elysium and hasten to join a shipmate, who was waiting for him in a light sail-boat off Napeague Inlet, to take him back to New London and the stern realities of life. And so, after a final settlement as to the probable time of his return from his first West Indian voyage; and a little more previsionary talk about the happiness of which they were so well assured the enjoyment in the coming autumn; and consequently more love-making and caressing, all of which could have no interest for anybody but themselves, the lovers parted.

V.
THE POISON OF GOLD

There was no difficulty whatever in establishing the identity of the Van Deust brothers, and no obstacles were interposed to prevent their entering into possession of their fortune as speedily as the forms of law and the time requisite for communication with Holland would permit; for in those days it had not yet become a branch of the legal business to stir up vexatious will contests, based upon the fictitious claims of presumptive heirs, in order that lawyers might fleece the real inheritors. Even before the money arrived from Holland Peter wanted a few thousand dollars of it in the house as a tangible evidence of the reality of their wealth; and Mr. Holden very cheerfully humored his whim by making him an advance of the required amount. The old man had no idea of investing the money, or buying anything with it; but he loved to run his fingers through the glittering coins from time to time and listen to the mellifluous music of their chinking; to count, and recount, and pile the yellow discs, and think what he could do with them if he had a mind to. The unhappy fact was that this sudden acquisition of wealth had developed a really miserly disposition in the elder brother. As is very common, especially among those who only acquire large fortunes late in life, possession begat in him a longing to possess. He even felt it an injury that he had been all those years without that money, the existence even of which he had not known, and for which, now that he clutched it, he really had not the slightest use. He had never been one at whom the tongue of scandal might have wagged the reproach of prodigality, even in his youth; but his jealously careful economy was greater now than it had ever before been.

Jacob proposed one day that they should purchase two black broadcloth suits and crape-bound hats, to be worn as mourning for Uncle Dietrich; but was completely discomfited by the look of pained surprise with which Peter regarded him, and the tone in which he replied:

"Now, Jacob, would you go to making ducks and drakes of our little money in that way, and at your time of life?"

No, Jacob resigned his idea of a tribute to Uncle Dietrich's memory, and penitently declared he really had no notion of becoming a spendthrift; and thereafter he uncomplainingly and unquestioningly left his elder brother to the sole administration of their joint wealth.

When the bulk of their inheritance arrived and was placed in the hands of Mr. Holden for investment on bond and mortgage in New York, that it might yield more dollars to covetous Peter's longings, then the old man's troubles indeed began. When he heard of a fire, he trembled to think that perhaps it was property mortgaged to the Van Deust Fund that was burned. When he read of a bankruptcy he shuddered for fear that the delinquent might have been indebted to the Van Deust Fund. When he had no bad news, then his anxiety was even greater, for at times he was capable of thinking it possible that worthy little Mr. Holden might have run away with the Van Deust Fund bodily. All this made him a very uneasy and unhappy old man. Jacob's kinder and more trustful nature gave place to none of those anxieties, and Peter resented his seeming indifference to the Van Deust Fund.

"Jacob," said he, one day, "we might live to see the Fund doubled."

"Well, Peter, if it were, what more good would it do us?"

The elder brother felt almost sick with disgust at that unambitious reply, and said that he felt so.

Thus it was that Peter's temper, never a remarkably sweet one, became so sour that meek old Jacob grew to look upon him with actual dread and would shun him, or sit looking askance and timidly at him, when they smoked together on the porch in the evenings, in the habit but not the content of former days. And, seeing this, a new suspicion entered Peter's soul to plague him.

"I suppose," said he, one day, with a grim smile, "that you think because I'm the oldest, I'll die first."

"Now, now, Peter, my dear Peter! I assure you I never had such a thought," protested horrified Jacob.

"Oh, it's only natural you should. I don't blame you. But I'm good for a good many years yet, Jacob; a good many years yet."

"I trust and fervently hope and pray, brother Peter, that you may be good for very many years to come." And the tender-hearted old man's voice trembled, and his eyes were moist as he spoke. "Why," said he, "to think of your dying, Peter, gives me a – a – a – "

"An idea, eh?"

"No, no, Peter, not at all that. No. A cold shudder, I meant; but you startled me so I couldn't think of the word. After all the many years we have lived together, all by ourselves, with no other companions and hardly any other friends than each other! Why, Peter, if I were to lose you, I'd want to die myself, right off."

"Humph. Not you. I know what you'd want to do a heap more. And I don't blame you. Oh, no. It's natural for you. But I know."

"Know what?"

"I know what you'd do with the Fund if I was out of the way."

"Then you know much more, Peter, than I should know, even if I had it in my hands, to do what I pleased with this blessed minute."

"Why, you'd be a special Providence for the women. That's what you'd be, you soft old noodle. You'd give it away to the young ones that wanted to marry, like Mary Wallace; to the middle-aged ones who were sorry they had married, like Mrs. Richards. Oh, you don't think I've noticed and understood your hinting 'how poor she was,' and 'how hard she must find it to get along with her five small children and deserted by her worthless husband;' and I've no doubt, if the truth were known, he had some good reasons for leaving her. And you'd give it to the old ones, just because they were old women. You'd give a lot of it to Mary Wallace, for her mother's sake, I've no doubt. Oh, yes. Beautiful ideas you'd have, and fine things you'd do with the Fund if I was out of the road."

"If I should do all that you have said, brother, I think the Fund would be doing a great deal more good than it does now."

"Aha! There! You admit it! I knew it! But you needn't think you'll ever get the chance. I'll live to bury you yet."

By this time he had worked himself up into a veritable passion; his lean old fingers trembled with the agitation of his wrath, and his perverted senses were deaf and blind to the loving kindness of Jacob's meek and gentle response, "And I hope, Peter, that you may."

"You don't. You're a hypocrite," he retorted, furiously. Jacob looked at him sadly, shook his head, and after lighting his pipe in silence, strolled away for his evening smoke to the woods, where he was wont to retire when Peter made the house too warm for him.

But the crushed worm, proverbially at least, eventually turns; and one day the younger brother, badgered beyond endurance by those oft-repeated taunts and reproaches, which were always accompanied by cruel raspings of the old wound in his heart, faced his tormentor and replied:

"Well," he said, "take it by and large, and I think if I should do all that you have said with the money I'd make a better use of it than you'd be likely to."

"What do you know about what I'd do with it?"

"No more than you know what I would; but I've got just as good a right to guess as you have."

"Well, what do you 'guess'?" retorted Peter, with a sneering wicked grin.

"Why, I imagine that as long as you lived you would hang on to every penny of it, like an old miser as you are, and when Death loosed the greedy clutch of your avaricious fingers from it, it would be discovered that you had left it all to found a home for worn-out, dried-up, useless, ill-natured old animals such as we are, creatures who have outlived all love but that of self, and deserve no other; men who, like you, have no without a blush for what they are, and a sigh for what they might have been."

"Jacob, you're a chuckle-headed ass."

"Peter, you're a soulless old curmudgeon, and a brute."

"Don't you talk to me like that. For two cents I'd knock your head off."

"For a money consideration I've no doubt you'd try it; but I'll bet you a thousand dollars you can't knock one side of it off."

"You'll bet a thousand dollars! I'd like to know where you'd get 'em."

"Right in the house. Half the money that's there belongs to me. It all belongs to me just as much as to you."

"Oh, indeed! And you'd like to knock me in the head and get possession of it, wouldn't you?"

"No. But I'd like to jam some sense into your thick skull, and bleed out some of the meanness and selfishness that fills your heart."

"Faw de Lo'd's sake. Is you boys a qwa'lin'?" demanded old black Betsy, coming up on the porch; and they slunk away ashamed before her.

But when Jacob had once "read the Declaration of Independence," as he styled his self-assertion against Peter's domineering disposition, he soon fell into the habit of repeating the precedent, and as Peter did not willingly or easily relinquish his sovereignty – the prerogative of seniority in his opinion – they had many a wordy wrangle, and not infrequently uttered to each other such threats as might well have seemed ominous if overheard by strangers. And they were overheard, and their quarrels were repeated and magnified in circulation from mouth to mouth; so that it was not long before it became matter of common notoriety in the community that the two old men had actually had knock-down fights; and once, when Peter was laid up with the rheumatism, and Jacob was nursing him most tenderly and assiduously – notwithstanding the invalid's temper was just then even worse than usual – it was popularly believed that the elder brother had been almost killed by the younger in a bloody combat, and there were those who even talked of "speaking to the squire about it." But the brothers never did come to blows, and the only immediate result of their quarrels was a formal division between them of the money on hand in the house, after which it was allowed to lie in two parts, as useless as it before was in one. Jacob indeed had some idea of giving his share to Mary Wallace, but could not exactly make up his mind upon what pretence or with what excuse to offer it, and feared to offend her.

One day he sat on a little mossy bank by the roadside when she passed him, coming from the woods with a bunch of wild flowers in her hands and going toward her uncle's house. She was close to him, but did not see him. Her thoughts were upon her absent lover, and in the exaltation of her happiness she was oblivious to all about her but her own joy. The old man's eyes were upon her, however, reading her secret in her countenance transfigured by love and hope. Ah! how her look brought back her mother's face to his remembrance.

"Little she would care," he said softly to himself, "for the money now. She has love; and that is better than gold."

VI.
WHAT WOULD STEADY SILAS

But when approaching her home, Mary controlled her countenance and was quite demure. The happy ones do well to hide their felicity, lest the envy it would beget should make the world intolerable. And about Uncle Thatcher's house there was an atmosphere that made very easy the repression of joyous emotion. It was a square frame dwelling, two stories high, in a bare sandy yard surrounded on three sides by a rickety fence of rails and on the forth – the front – by palings, with a gate in the middle of them. There were no shutters on the windows, that looked like great staring dead eyes, sometimes with a blaze of fury in them when the sun, low in the west, glared upon them; and there was no porch, but only a big stone for a step at the door. There were no vines trailing against the walls; no flowers in the yard, but only weeds in the fence corners; and no trees. Everything that might have adorned or softened the expression of the place was lacking. The birds always flew swiftly by it and never stopped there to sing.

At one end of this cheerless home was a crumbling well-curb, to which came often, to draw water, a tall, gaunt, sallow and slatternly woman, who continually wore a sun-bonnet and had her sleeves rolled up on her lean sinewy arms. A tangled wisp of unkempt sandy hair never failed to dangle below the curtain of the sun-bonnet on the back of her neck. That woman was Aunt Thatcher.

Behind the house, and separated from it by a stable-yard, knee-deep in time of rain, with muck and foul green water, stood an old barn, from which was diffused a dull but quite perceptible odor of animal decomposition, arising out of a great pile of crude whalebone, or "ballein", and some barrels of whale oil. Uncle Thatcher was captain of a shore whaling company, and in his barn those articles were generally stored until they could be sent to market. The "ballein" needed to be kept some time, for cleaning, scraping, and splitting before it could be sold.

As Mary reached the gate, she stood still for a few minutes, contemplating the scene of thriftlessness and apparent poverty before her; a picture for which, as she well knew, no good reason existed in fact, for Uncle Thatcher was by no means a poor man. As captain of the whaling crew, his annual gains were considerable. Then he owned a fishing smack and a large share in a big coasting schooner that plied from Sag Harbor, both of which paid him well. But better than either of those to him was an industry, the nature and importance of which Mary little understood, although she suspected something of its mysteries. At certain times each month Uncle Thatcher and one particular neighbor used to go fishing in a stout whaleboat rigged with a sail, on moonlit nights, and upon those occasions they were almost always lucky enough to find one or two casks of rum – doubtless washed overboard from some vessel homeward-bound to New Haven from the West Indies. (It was wonderful how many casks of rum were thus lost overboard in those days, just off Napeague Inlet.) Or, by the accidental use of a grapnel, they would chance to fish up some bottles of valuable "bay-oil" from the bottom. Uncle Thatcher used to bury that treasure-trove in the sand, back of his barn, and it always mysteriously disappeared at night, when nobody was watching it. Yet he never seemed to take those losses to heart, but would find and bury more rum and bay oil, in the same place, to be lost in just the same way. "Smuggling, eh?" Well, yes. But they didn't call it that. They spoke of it as "finding and saving things."

While Mary stood at the gate, Uncle Thatcher himself sat upon the stone door-step, sharpening with a whetstone the edge of a "blubber-spade" – a sort of huge long-handled chisel, used to cut a whale's blubber from his carcass and into strips. He was a tall man, wirily and powerfully built, past middle-age, but still bearing well his years. His gray eyes were overhung by exceedingly bushy iron-gray brows; his nose was large and beak-shaped; his lips, thin and straight; his ears wide and thick; and his hands big and bony, with thick fingers, flat at the ends and having great joints.

Looking up from his work, he demanded of the young girl, in a tone of querulous surprise, "Where on earth have you been? I've been looking everywhere for you to turn the grindstone."

"I'm ready to do it now, uncle," responded Mary, evading a reply to his question by the prompt proffer of her services.

"Oh, I don't need you now. Your aunt turned it."

He gave a few rubs of the whetstone on the shining blade, in an absent-minded way, and then laying the long spade across his knees, and looking sharply at Mary, said slowly, as if carefully choosing his words:

"You don't get used to our way of living out here on the beach, do you, Mary? You'd rather be back in the city, where you lived when you were a little girl, wouldn't you?"

"Oh, no, uncle. My memories of the city do not make me wish to return to it. Papa and mamma died there, and after we lost papa we had to live in a very poor part of the city, where the tall houses hid the sunshine, and the air was always bad, and there was so much misery, and dirt, and sickness all about us. Oh, I loathed it as a child, and it makes me almost sick to think of it now. No, I do not wish to go back to the city. I like best the bright sunlight and the pure ocean breezes. I love even the storms."

"But if you could live in a nice place in the city?"

"No. I think I would be afraid to go back there now." While talking she had advanced from the gate, and now stood near her uncle.

"Sit down here beside me, Mary. I want to talk to you a little," said he.

She obeyed, trembling slightly, for she felt a vague presentiment that he proposed pressing a subject that she dreaded. But he was slow to begin, seemed to hesitate, and relapsed into thought while he pared his already stubby nails upon the sharp edge of the blubber-spade. At length, he "made out his bearings" and opened the attack.

"You know," he said, "that Silas has been a little wild, perhaps, in days gone by, as a young man of spirit is most likely to be; but I hope you have no hard feelings against him on account of his foolishness that time. You know he was only a boy, then; and he was, as you may say, carried away with you, and all struck of a heap when you gave him the mitten so plainly. Maybe he deserved all he got that time, and I guess it done him good; so we'll call that square and let by-gones be by-gones. Is that your idea?"

"Yes, uncle," answered Mary timidly, in a low voice.

"Give us your hand on it."

With a little smile the girl extended her hand, which Uncle Thatcher took very seriously, and treated to a solemn pump-handle-like shake.

"And now here's the point," he went on, still holding her fingers; "Silas is going to settle down and be steady. He wrote to me about three months ago, from Boston, and said he'd got work there as a ship-carpenter, and had quit his wild ways, and wasn't going to call on me for any more money. Well, he has kept his own word about the money, and by that I judge he's all right, earning an honest living, and doing as he said. But he likes living in the city better than down here on the beach. And now do you know what would do more than anything else to keep him steady?"

Mary shook her head. She had an idea of what he meant, but did not wish to encourage him in the direction he was tending.

"A good wife would," said Uncle Thatcher very decidedly.

"Then I hope he will succeed in finding one in Boston," replied the girl, with purposeful evasion of the direct attack.

"That's not my idea. I don't want him to marry a Boston girl. I've got my eye on a girl who I know is all that a good wife should be, the very one that Silas ought to have. You know who I mean. It's you, Mary."

"A girl should never marry a man she doesn't love, uncle, and I don't love Silas."

He bit his lips, was silent for a moment, and then resumed: "You're only a girl, yet, and can't rightly be expected to know your own mind; and besides, it's three years since you have seen Silas. You don't know how you might feel towards him if you were to see him again now."

She shook her head, for she thought she did know very well, as she mentally put Silas and Dorn in contrast, but did not answer.

"I hope," he continued, viewing her with a little growing suspicion, "that you've got over that childish notion you had once about that young Hackett chap. He's gone, the Lord knows where, and I'll be bound, never thinks of you any more. Now, if you marry Silas, I can give you a good start in life. I'm not poor, and if you and Silas prefer to live in the city, why I'll furnish a house for you there nicely, and start him in some business, and – "

"Oh, no, no, uncle! Please do not talk any more about it. I can't marry Silas. Indeed, I can't."

Uncle Thatcher's face crimsoned with anger, but he restrained himself, and said: "Ah, I suppose you still think that young Hackett will come back of the same mind that he went away. Aha! Not he! Those young sailor chaps have a wife in every port. And he'd better not come snooping around here, if he does come back, or I'll – "

Suddenly breaking off his speech, he sprang to his feet, clutched his hat from the ground, and started off for the beach, running at the top of his speed. His quick eye had seen, afar off upon the bluff overlooking the sea, a man on horseback, who waved, with excited gestures, a small red flag.